


The things we lost in being Blessed

by Eturni



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Body Horror, Character Study, Crowley is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Crowley is soft for humans, Crowley's True Form (Good Omens), Elements of Jewish faith written by a goy, Fear of manipulation, First Kiss, Graphic descriptions of violence but with holy energy?, Joan of Arc - Freeform, Kissing, Mezuzot, Naomi & Ruth are not straight, Other, Pining, Rejection of Faith, Self harm with blessings, Unbecomming, Why Crowley is afraid of being stuck as a snake, crisis of self
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:08:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23949646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eturni/pseuds/Eturni
Summary: In a church in 1941 Crowley burned to be on consecrated ground. In Heaven, after Armageddon, Crowley did not burn.What if there was only so much that could burn away when a demon came into contact with holy things? What would that make him at the point that what was consecrated no longer harmed him?Crowley grapples with this across the ages. Considers punishments, his place in the world, his place in Hell and, worst of all, whether Aziraphale has any understanding of the things that are happening to him. (There's a happy ending, but happy isn't easy and is rarely everything you wanted)
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 28
Kudos: 83





	1. Protection from good and evil

**Author's Note:**

> Happy GO 1st and 30th anniversary?
> 
> This has been in the works for a while now. Technically my last chapter is still in the works but with the muse no longer playing fair with my current WIP I wanted to have something out there that I've been working on since this idea struck me.
> 
> A huge thank you to my beta OAbsalom whose fics you should absolutely check out if you enjoy this kind of character study/stark story.

It is a poorly documented (because of the discorporation) but well known fact that holy places, properly formed occult protections and even well-loved good luck symbols have the ability not only to harm demonic entities, but to _burn pieces of them away_. This happened to the smallest of Hellhounds when passing through the threshold of a cottage in a certain sleepy Oxfordshire village. 

It had also happened, to varying degrees, to Hell’s longest standing agent on Earth.

After all, demons and angels weren’t the only ones bound by belief or the only ones that could alter how the world responded by believing thoroughly enough. Usually it took hundreds upon thousands of believing humans to give a thing power, but it could just as easily be as small as a placebo effect on their own body.

All this to say, of course, that when humans first started to make their own talismans against evil, sometimes it was the strength of enough peoples’ faith that gave them a modicum of true power rather than any sort of competency in occult magics.

The first time Crowley came across a mezuzah he was barely aware of it. It had the same faint fizz of something holy that most sacred texts had; a bit like becoming suddenly aware of a nearby bowl of peanuts when you had a bad allergy. It was holy prayer and came with all of the usual sacred anathema to a demon but was not necessarily _obstructive._

As mezuzot became more common, and more solidified in the collective human consciousness, Crawly slowly came to find it difficult to pass into homes that were protected by them despite it not being the original intention of them. It made more than one passover uncomfortable when he had to grit his teeth and force himself forward through the initial discomfort and burn of the threshold.

At first it meant nothing to Crowley – the odd burn of the sacred against the protective shell of his corporation. It was simply something that he had to push past; both in the business of completing temptations and in getting to see some of his favourite humans.

He’d burned worse for less after all.

There was no reason, in Crowley’s mind, to bother changing his habits. The discomfort passed as soon as he was over the threshold and he got steadily better at bracing for the abrasive sting of it. Until Moab and Judah. Until Naomi and Ruth.

It was one of the few times Crowley, then Crawly, had done something that truly made him feel the weight of disappointment in the world. Not to mention that he had also accidentally done the _right_ thing. He had been on the road with both of them since Moab, having offered them an escort for protection from starvation and anyone on the road who might do them harm.

What else was a pining demon supposed to do when faced with a woman declaring, so openly and boldly, to _another woman,_ that she would follow her wherever she went and love her even into death?

Apparently what a demon should _not_ do if he wanted to keep the balance towards his own side and, more importantly, support the impossible love of two deeply faithful women, was send the blessed Moabite princess into the fields of the richest bloke in the area after the pe’ah and leket left from the reaping.

Crawly had stayed behind at the time, drinking something that wasn’t quite yet proper alcohol alongside Naomi. He still wasn’t sure if he was trying to talk her out of the name change or encourage it.

“Mara, I should be Mara, the Lord’s dealt with me bitterly enough already.” She had declared bitingly, looking down at the cup of drink in her hands.

Crawly had stretched further back against a warm rock, basking in the sun with a slow nod. Tended to deal pretty strictly with everyone for the smallest of infractions. If this _was_ even Her doing and not just… life bollocks. “Yeah, I think I get that. Been thinking about changing my own, too, actually. Still got a little sweet in your life though, right?”

Millennia later he still remembered the soft breath of a laugh that declaration pulled out of Naomi, and the split second later when Ruth had appeared around the hill and Naomi had lit up like the East had brought the sun up especially for her. He wondered if that was the way he looked when he saw Aziraphale unexpectedly. Sometimes, when he felt especially blindly optimistic, he wondered if it was similar to some of the smiles that Aziraphale gave _him_ when they met. Sometimes he saw Aziraphale and thought it was.

Ruth came back with her arms full of food and the name of the field’s owner on her lips. Crawly had seen the moment that something changed in Naomi. She had drawn Ruth close and started making plans. In a mere second the world had changed.

\- - -

Before he knew it, truly, barely _weeks_ later it felt, he was sat in clothes fit for a wedding feast, deep into his cups with Naomi as Ruth sat with her new husband.

“New property ownership.” He’d muttered angrily into his drink.

He was a little startled to get a squeeze on the knee and to see Naomi looking up at him, softly, with both love and resignation. “We do our duty to G-d. We make things right and she _must_ have a husband if she is to live with anything but poverty and fear. I will always love her but we must do as our station demands and as G-d requires.”

“She’d live happily. She’d have love.” Not for the first time he wished he had something to hide the emotions that must be playing across his face as he looked over to Ruth and thought of Aziraphale. He thought of the acceptance he had to have that the angel would always do his duty. He would never even have the chance to make a declaration to Aziraphale the way Ruth and Naomi had for each other. Never mind the similar impossibility of their situations.

Crawly waved a hand until the wine resembled something strong enough to suit him and didn’t intend to stop until the suddenly aching place in his chest was too numb to feel.

This was promptly derailed by an inhuman screeching sound outside of Boaz’s home. A collective shiver of unease and fear passed through the wedding party but no one ran to check on the unfortunate soul. In fact, they seemed singularly unaware of their own reactions altogether, aside from a sudden dampening of the general cheer.

Crawly stumbled to his feet and down the halls, muttering something about the bathroom so Naomi wouldn’t be too alarmed. Wouldn’t take the considerable risk of following him.

“Crawly! What are you playing at?” Hastur’s eyes were dark and judging from where he stood outside of the home, fingers dripping an oily liquid from where he’d almost bitten through them.

“Duke Hastur!” He defaulted to bright and pleasant, hoping to play off… whatever this was. Whatever could have brought the duke up here on a tirade against him. “T’wat do I owe this pleasuuure?” He blinked slowly a couple of times to get his bearings.

“How dare you? And what are you-? **How?** ” The duke looked to the mezuzah on the doorpost with a mixture of revulsion and anxiety.

“Nah, stings little but s’nothin. S’fine. Jus’ temprar- temopa- tim- quick. Stops quick.” He assured the duke, eyeing him through the haze of his intoxication but loathe to look like he thought he had done something he _needed_ to be sober for. Plausible deniability was Crawly’s game.

“Crawly, do you have any idea what is going on here? Celebrating like one of them. Disgusting. It’s-” Hastur choked back on his next words. Something part way between agony and determination settled onto his features as he pushed against the blessing on the home, clearly determined to not be outmatched by a lesser demon. (This regardless of the fact that Crawly didn’t really fit all that well into the traditional hierarchy of Hell. Honestly, it was likely one of the things that went against him in Hastur’s eyes.)

The agony only etched itself deeper into Hastur’s face as the smell of scorched earth and brimstone grew in the air. The frog, the true demon form too large to be held entirely within a corporation, was distorting and burning at the edges. Crawly watched in rapt horror as one of the toes burned away entirely before Hastur finally stepped back, rage clear across his face.

Crawly felt his stomach churn and almost found the wine he’d imbibed back on the outside of his corporation. He finally did feel numb all over, disconnected from his mortal form as he watched Hastur trying to pass through.

Crawly didn’t care much about Hastur’s ire. The unnecessary blood had drained from his face as he stumbled out of the house and stared, accusingly and with dawning terror, at the little mezuzah on the doorpost. He thought of the years that he’d been coming back to check on the Jews. On his favourite families. Considered what it might have been doing to his insides all these years to pass through that burning, blessed threshold with nothing more than the flesh of his corporation as protection.

He stumbled further away from a still seething Hastur with the vaguest of hand waves and an “I’ll send a report later.”

He at least managed to get home before he threw up everything he’d taken into his corporation that day. He was almost trembling as he lay down on his bed and let himself out of his corporation. Crawly looked down at the form he had come to think of as himself for a moment or two, mostly to put off the necessary.

When he finally let his consciousness expand outwards to take in his own form Crawly could feel something trembling and tight across the edges of him. Fear. Apprehension. The most base, raw versions of them; beyond anything he felt from being called down to Hell for his evaluation. It was a little like the fall; knowing that something was changing, something he was far too late to stop, and yet having no idea how to face it. No idea what the end product would look like.

As it was, the edges of his shadowed, serpentine form looked dull, like a bad shed skin not pulled clear or like the milky rheumatism of old eyes. He was supposed to be dark and sleek as his wings or as the vastness of the space between stars. Instead what was there looked… wan. Sickly.

He’d been doing it to himself. For centuries by that point.

He’d passed through sacred verses and holy words and had-

Had _willingly-_

His form shook and trembled; a dark liturgy of demonic curses and words tripping out and filling the air as he tried to work out what he was going to do. He could only hope, because She only knew he couldn’t _pray,_ that it wasn’t permanent.

He ranted and cursed and emitted something that could be considered a screech by any creature who might hear it and actually survive.

Then, he slumped back into his corporation and planned. How to avoid this in the future and how he was going to play off that he could do it at all. He had work ahead of him. Work that he would definitely prefer to shirk entirely in favour of having a good old fashioned breakdown, tearing through the streets in a path of destruction that would take generations to recover from, and slipping into a hundred year nap.

Instead he held himself together and planned. Elsewhere in the city Ruth and Naomi were working to make the best lives that they could out of the bitter cards that had been dealt to them. Crawly could find a way to work around the damage that these blessed things could wreak on the core of him.


	2. Caught up and lost in all of our virtues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley proposes The Arrangement as a way to sate the very uncomfortable itch that urges him to do good things sometimes. It comes with very unintended consequences for the first demon to every try his hand at blessing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to my beta [ OAbsalom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OAbsalom/works)
> 
> Definitely hoping that I'll have all of this done by the time the last chapter drops, but given that it's weekly I sure as Hell am aiming to be done before that. If only I was being at all productive at the moment :D

For the next few centuries Crawly avoided homes with mezuzot as much as possible. He took reassignments with much less grumbling, though it left something in him a little lonely.

Humans in general were interesting, contradictory creatures at all times, and Crawly enjoyed their company, but most Jewish people Crawly came across were natural questioners. They wanted to know the whys and the hows and find the loopholes, even with God. In the best way a demon knew how, Crawly loved them. Felt a kinship with these humans who could be fierce and questioning and never Fall or have it shake the faith underneath it all. He envied them too, sometimes. But he stayed away; banished by the knowledge of what their protections could do to the core of him.

Sometimes it felt like one more punishment from Her, to keep him away from anything he might care for. Demons weren’t _supposed_ to care after all. Weren’t supposed to be cared _for._

That one had been echoed down the ages by Aziraphale. _I don’t know you. I don’t like you. I deny you._

It was fine, as much as it wasn’t. He would do what it took to keep himself safe. He would accept whatever was needed to keep Aziraphale safe. Crawly cared, but he _Fell_ for caring what would happen to humans, and Aziraphale was a brilliant contradiction, a timid rainbow of his own against the black and white thinking of Hell and Heaven. All of that keeping Aziraphale different, then, could be written off as properly demonic. Or at the very least the very specific type of demonic that Crawly espoused, which was not quite Hell’s ideal but which suited Crawly and his lack of conformity quite well, thank you very much.

All of this meant that the demon was slow to come to the conclusion that other things were affecting and changing him, too.

Crawly had never been a cruel demon, at least not for _cruelty’s sake,_ had never (done his _best_ to never) gone after children. More and more, though, as the years passed, he realised that he was offering up small kindnesses to strangers, fudging the numbers a little on his temptations. Even, on occasion, actively _helping_ others before he even realised he’d moved. Without any excuse of working against some Heavenly _act of God,_ which was how he got around certain disaster relief attempts. It was as though there was some very human-like reflex to treat those he was around as his community.

It was uncomfortable at times to catch himself just _wanting_ to do a good deed for someone.

Enter _The Arrangement._ Aziraphale was always the one who understood him best, even while he was spending all of his energy flustered and denying the truth of it. Aziraphale cared for humans in a way that didn’t fit with Heaven’s regimented way of thinking. He leaned a little towards human too, the same way Crowley did.

Being pulled towards some unknown centre line felt like an apt description of whatever was happening to Crowley’s instincts. He sometimes felt closer to that centre just from being around Aziraphale. The angel may be deeply kind and protective of humans but he was a bastard and a hedonist, too.

Crowley had enough knowledge of humans by that point to understand that what he felt could be mistaken for love if he weren’t a demon and therefore incapable. It was a feeling that had started in the garden. An odd fluttering glimmer lit by this being who was so much more _himself_ than he was an angel. The fact that the feeling only seemed to grow terrified Crowley. It took up spaces in the hollow shell of him that no goodness was supposed to touch. He couldn’t control the addictive gravity of that feeling, that inevitable pull back to Aziraphale.

**But** if Crowley was starting to waver, starting to feel part of his demonic essence slip away, perhaps Aziraphale was feeling it too, would be willing to meet him halfway. Make this strange, frightening thing a little less lonely.

That went well.

Crowley brushed off the refusal with a few dramatic flourishes and went about his day with a considerably more sour disposition. The attempt to brush it off as nothing did not stop him from closing up his tent that night and almost screaming in frustration; jaw tight as he paced the length of the space and knocked back a tankard of mead that never quite found itself empty.

“What was that about?” He growled to himself as his thoughts tripped over themselves into a downward spiral.

Was he still just too scared to openly acknowledge that something was changing? Even with Crowley doing the reaching out (always, across any gap).

Or was this not happening to Aziraphale? Was Crowley truly alone in the deterioration of the evil in the essence of him?

Perhaps Aziraphale just _was,_ somehow, how he was. Perhaps he never felt as though he was on the outskirts of his own side, finding ways to work better and knowing that he had something in him that understood humans so much more than any of his own. Crowley certainly _thought_ Aziraphale must know what that was like. He’d seen the angel be brilliantly human. Maybe it was projecting though. Or hope. He knew he very much did not like how alone it felt to think he was the only one.

He stopped his pacing and stared sullenly into his tankard. He didn’t really know what it meant if he was the only one. He supposed it made sense really, of course an angel wouldn’t be further punished the way a demon was. He ought to be fairly happy at that thought, by rights. He liked Aziraphale well enough, whether or not the nervous thing wanted to admit anything in return, and Crowley really didn’t want to think about the possibility of him Falling for getting too close to the morally grey.

It made sense. It was good. It left him feeling heavy with the weight of it regardless.

He continued to meet with Aziraphale, occasionally testing the waters of The Arrangement again. Their paths seemed to cross more frequently each time, not always solely due to Crowley’s close monitoring of his counterpart. He could feel himself changing still and desperately looked for signs of the opposite in Aziraphale. The more he saw Aziraphale, the more he wanted to keep seeing him, and the more his thoughts warred with each other. He wanted to do kind things for humans. He wanted to be thoughtful to Aziraphale. He still, very much, enjoyed tempting people further towards the evils he could sense in them. The dark wants that disregarded anything but what would benefit them, and that thrilled Crowley to sense emanating from humanity in droves.

By the time Aziraphale acquiesced to The Arrangement Crowley had managed to accept that he and Aziraphale weren’t quite as similar as he had first thought. He was still an absolute arsehole when he wanted to be, and they were still friends no matter what excuse or denial the angel cooked up, but he knew that the other was fully Heaven’s and that he was far too afraid of any repercussions to do some of the risky things Crowley proposed.

He could accept that. He _did_ want Aziraphale safe after all. So he made some modifications to The Arrangement, re-proposed it, and was both pleased and terribly smug to find it accepted.

They were sitting at a low table talking in a private room over sake and wine when Crowley broached it for the final time. They had run into each other in Japan where Crowley was encouraging the raising and separation of the military class. He had walked Aziraphale through the finer points of how _none of this was bad inherently_ but that a class that had more power and status, and would therefore amass more wealth, was always going to be a rife breeding ground for the wrong sorts to commit worse and worse acts.

Aziraphale had initially been annoyed but good alcohol had taken the edge from his disapproval. Then Crowley had managed to get his angel talking about his most recent acquisition and the demon could all but lie back and just watch the other go. Aziraphale, delighted and completely caught up in himself, was a sight to behold every time.

Crowley felt some of the tension in him uncoil as he watched Aziraphale slip bites of food into his mouth in between tales of how he had scored a copy of a very interesting manuscript about the life of courtiers at the time. It was, allegedly, completely unlike anything that had come before. A saga, an epic work of fiction, written out to be read again any time.

He was beautiful when that anxiety about his job and his expectations slipped away in the face of something he was truly excited about. It gave Crowley that slight warmth again that made him want to be reckless in the face of the feeling of it. He put forward the rearranged Arrangement and was almost floored to have it accepted.

Aziraphale’s hand was warm and firm as they shook on it. Crowley looked to him across the table and felt so much more warmth rising in him than the sake could account for. He looked away quickly; putting that feeling away somewhere in the aching chest of him.

What Crowley quickly and unfortunately came to realise as The Arrangement progressed was that the blessings didn’t sate the random urges to do good. If anything it made it worse. It also meant seeing Aziraphale more often, both in the interests of sharing work and in officially negotiating truces in areas.

He hated it. He wouldn’t trade it for the world when it meant seeing Aziraphale like this.

At first he didn’t know, couldn’t have known, the difference that the blessings were making. Blessings were simple and came easily enough; just the slightest repurposing of his powers. It meant that he didn’t have to do quite as much work. Could bunk off every other temptation and spend some time basking in the sun or in bed as a reward for a job not at all done.

The awareness of it came slowly. At first they only traded small favours. Aziraphale was cagey about trusting Crowley to complete the blessings properly and had been certain he would not be able to make himself complete the temptations. What a crock that was. Crowley still remembered his grace; losing it wasn’t a thing you forgot, and for his part Aziraphale was a natural at a wide array of temptations. It wasn’t exactly surprising, given how much the angel enjoyed indulging himself in very human pleasures.

Building up the significance of the blessings that he provided masked the effect of them on his demonic essence for a long time. The moment he became aware of it, however, it was terrifyingly obvious. Crowley could feel this odd thing growing roots in him, or at the least sinking in claws. He carried out the occasional blessing or good deed in the name of The Arrangement. It tapped into a place in him that could still provide something very nearly divine and it stretched and strengthened those almost-atrophied muscles. If anything it wasn’t enough.

If anything it ate at him. His urges to help random passers-by or provide comfort to some idiot lost in their grief in the pub were all the more frequent for having accessed that power.

Crowley wondered if it was like putting petrol in a diesel engine. He was doing something completely incompatible with his essence and perhaps one day it would break him apart. Yet Aziraphale appeared completely unbothered and unchanged by any of it.

As his anxieties about The Arrangement grew, Crowley made occasional quiet offerings to break the whole thing off, wondering what damage it might be doing to him.

The first time was in the middle of the 14th century. The plague breathed pestilence and fear across Europe. It was the perfect breeding ground for dissent and cruelty, so Crowley had been sent off to Germany to encourage some of the worst of it. He had taken with him Aziraphale’s orders to provide divine intervention in Venice to support the progression of quarantine measures.

He barely made it back to Italy from Germany in order to check on his work. His temptations had gone, as they always seemed to in these situations, horribly and irreparably right. All he’d needed to do was breathe the word _scapegoat_ into a dozen of the right ears and they’d taken up arms themselves. Decided on the Jews. And why was it _always_ them when shit like this kicked off? ‘Favoured children’ his considerably bony arse, when testing them always meant testing the brilliant ones to destruction. He could smell the fires of Esslingen all the way to the port; misery wrapped around his shattered soul like a shroud.

Then he saw what quarantine measures truly meant. Locked away whether sick or healthy for just long enough to kill off everyone if even a few people were sick. Sensing with the parts of him that still knew how to bless he found a ship full of the poor buggers, could feel the sickness spreading and the panic rising. There were so many kids. Refugees, not a merchant ship or military. He was raising a hand to pull power from Below before the thought crossed his mind. Had only half a second to stop himself.

But there were kids. He pulled the power defiantly. Sat there for two weeks straight, unmoving and barely seeing, to protect the uninfected from catching the plague until it burned itself through those he had been too late to safeguard. Somewhere in the fourth day he’d felt something tear down the centre of him and he’d spent the rest of his time in a stupor, just trying to get through. Just trying to make whatever sacrifice he’d just made _worth it._ The second he stumbled home he tried to find a way to get Aziraphale to denounce The Arrangement. When he wouldn’t the demon went to ground and slept for forty days.

The second was in 1431 Crowley had picked up a blessing for Aziraphale in Domrémy in 1425. Turning a young farmer’s daughter, Jeanne, to faith with visions and, later, to arms. She was an absolute spitfire and so much more brilliant than the majority of the people around her. Crowley almost felt affection for her as she headed off to help her people against the English.

Six years later he watched her burn. He posed as a soldier and provided her a cross to wear at the execution, one of the few requests she made of her captors. He tried not to tremble as they lit the pyre; as he watched God’s holy work come to its fruition and watched a martyr be made in the name of the blessings he had crafted. He spared one more to provide some measure of comfort through the process. There was no physical thing that could help her but he could at least ensure that she didn’t _feel_ alone. That she kept her faith through it. He thought he could feel that fire in the core of him too and wondered if it was his last kindness stripping away something at the core of him.

He took the long way back to Aziraphale to give himself time to craft a decent argument; terrified that he would all but beg the angel to take their Arrangement back if he contacted him too soon. He was unsurprisingly _not_ at his most persuasive after travelling alone and stewing on what he had seen.

He held out longer before asking the third time. He worked all of his angles and made sure he had the right arguments stacked up to be the most compelling and tempting he could. It was just a matter of finding the right temptation and blessing. Edinburgh in 1601, a little bit of sleight of hand over a coin toss had Aziraphale making the long and uncomfortable trek up on horseback.

By the time the angel returned he was aching and obviously displeased with both the travel and the fare on the road. Crowley swept him off for a decent meal somewhere discrete and got him just drunk enough to be a little more pliable and let Aziraphale talk. He gave up the correct little hums of empathy when Aziraphale spoke about how hard it had been. He even put some effort into being a bastard about some of it, pressing that Aziraphale had been doing work for a _demon_ and that it would always be difficult and unpleasant. When he finally leaned in and gently cajoled that they could give all this up if he wasn’t certain about it Aziraphale had almost instantly looked _disappointed_ of all things.

Crowley knew before the words were out of his mouth that his angel would refuse him. He just didn’t know **why.** What Aziraphale was possibly getting out of this for him to not want to back out the second he could. If anything the angel shifted minutely closer to him. He didn’t know whether to melt or weep. There was no way to change this without admitting to exactly what he was afraid of. And Crowley was, if anything, _more afraid_ that Aziraphale would see this mutilation of his demonic form as some sort of divine judgement or blessing and only dig his heels in more. Of course Crowley wouldn’t continue with The Arrangement that way but he also didn’t know if his heart would survive Aziraphale thinking that. Best not to know for sure.

There were smaller opportunities he provided throughout and afterwards for Aziraphale to back out of their Arrangement. Times that he pressed on the other that he had the worst end of the deal, trying to encourage the angel to demand that things change. For some reason he seemed reluctant to follow up on any of them. If anything, for all of his grumblings, he also seemed to enjoy splitting the work and passing information between themselves.

Crowley had taken to watching both their backs and Aziraphale himself during these meetings. The angel was nervous, alright, but he didn’t look over his shoulder nearly enough and the more that Crowley’s essence warped the less he could stomach the idea of Aziraphale being forced through similar changes or, worse, being found out and Falling.

So he hovered, just a little. He near enough _orbited,_ trying to monitor for trouble, looking for signs that his angel was affected and just hiding it. There was nothing and Crowley was glad, but in the meantime he continued to feel the blessings working their way underneath like roots finding a crack in the pavement and working it open. He was starting to feel kind. He was starting to hear it from Aziraphale with something soft in the angel’s eyes that made his stomach flip. One of these days it was going to dig into the edges of that crack and tear him open.

Crowley didn’t look at his true self very much any more.


	3. The places we carve out for each other

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Decades slipped into centuries, then into millennia with only two constants in Crowley’s life: paperwork and Aziraphale.
> 
> In which Crowley meditates on his own nature and one the nature of his friendship with Aziraphale. Featuring the opening of the bookshop in 1800.

Crowley is a ~~good, terrible~~ excellent demon. He takes a decent amount of pride in his work. He _knows_ humans; often better than they know themselves. He knows how to push their buttons and can occasionally manage it on an almost global scale if he puts the effort into it. Crowley is also a slothful demon, which is arguably good for humanity. They tended to do enough evil on their own that his active interference more often could have left them in a much worse situation. Of course; if the West hadn’t sent themselves into the dark ages with the whole Christianity thing and the urge to destroy any cultures that they could take over, they would have been maybe a full millennium ahead. Sometimes it seemed like a zero sum game all around.

That wasn’t the point.

The point _was_ that Crowley honestly enjoyed his work tempting souls for Hell. He liked creating inconveniences and watching humans go, reacting as kindly or evilly as they wished in response. Big on choice, Crowley was, and humanity was so very rarely boring in the ones that they made.

Crowley thrived on the evil he could find in people’s hearts, so often right below the surface of piety and goodness. At least, he usually did. He used to.

Decades slipped into centuries, then into millennia with only two constants in Crowley’s life: paperwork and Aziraphale.

Of course, there were the intermittent bouts of sleeping, temptations, quarterly reports, crushing anxiety, and pining but mostly all of that came wrapped up in one or the other. Even his decades long naps came with the prerequisite nightmare of paperwork when he woke up.

Crowley definitely knew which of his constants he preferred. Aziraphale was a bright, warm spot to bask in every time he saw the angel. Neither brightness nor warmth were things that should draw a demon in but they always had for Crowley. The faintest proximity of Aziraphale was like a beacon; drawing him close to a dangerous thing that had never once tried to harm him. Not intentionally.

He knew it wasn’t a thing that could last. The angel. The Arrangement. Their not-friendship. He was Aziraphale’s most feared secret. The angel’s delight in seeing him often gave way to suspicion and trite little platitudes shortly into their encounters. It was honestly a little endearing, if only because it let Crowley know that he hadn’t forgotten what he was or what they were to each other. Aziraphale’s continued holier-than-thou rejections whilst always walking back towards him must mean that he knew and accepted the evil that made up Crowley’s deepest core.

Unfortunately, that was also the exact thing that meant it couldn’t last. Crowley had lost his grace long ago. The dark thing in him that Aziraphale always pushed against was what was left of the demon after the Fall. It was everything Crowley was. It was everything he made for himself. It was everything Aziraphale doubted and vilified and, paradoxically, seemed to _want_ just as badly as Crowley wanted in return. It kept them returning to that orbit with each other, closer and quicker on each pass, despite the potential collision that seemed all but inevitable at the end of it.

Because Crowley was what he was, what he always would be. A fairly exceptional demon. Even if the words sometimes felt ragged and panicked in his own mind. A careful reassurance. A desperate plea for it to still be true.

In 1800 Aziraphale opened a shop in Soho, London. In 1800 Crowley brought chocolates for the opening. It was a small, human temptation. Not nearly enough to even really count against an angel, but it was something that was one of _his_ angel’s preferred weaknesses and by this point in time Crowley could admit that he enjoyed just seeing Aziraphale happy. Imagine his horror, then, when he spotted two _other_ angels, two interlopers, talking about taking Aziraphale away.

When he was done dealing with that little upset he had returned only to find the shop locked and barred. To all intents and purposes at least, genius angel that Aziraphale was.

The door itself had opened against the faintest press of his demonic suggestion but there was a threatening crosshatch of wards and protections that burned itself against Crowley’s awareness the second that the threshold was exposed.

He pulled up short, hand gripping around the chocolate box until the packaging crumpled and he felt one of the chocolates be crushed under his grasp.

He felt the fizz of it at the edge of him, a shudder down his spine as something uncomfortable twisted in his stomach. Once he was in there, he knew he would be in there until Aziraphale decided to open the wards enough for him to leave. The fact that he trusted the angel to let him leave, implicitly, was a little bit of a surprise easing the immediate knot in his stomach. It was still uncomfortable to look at and feel the reality of.

“Aziraphale?” He made the slightest move forward, holding out a cautious hand to this thing that could strip pieces of him away and slightly surprised to find the buzz of it shift in response to him like a lazy cat reluctantly shifting just far enough to allow passage through a sunbeam.

Aziraphale turned to him, confusion quickly turning to alarm. “Crowley! What are you doing? Get in here before somebody sees you. Gabriel was here not moments ago!” He urged in a hissed stage whisper, moving towards the door with eyes flitting nervously between the windows.

“The wards, angel.” Crowley eyed the threshold before him with a bristling sense of unease that made him want to bear fangs he wasn’t sporting. “You could probably keep Gabriel himself out with them if you felt like it.”

“Oh, yes, but they’ll let you through my dear, it’s _you._ ” Aziraphale flicked a hand dismissively through the air.

“I know they’ll let me through Aziraphale, I see that. But _I_ still have to pass through them, don’t I?”

_That’s the whole bloody point._

Aziraphale blinked slowly, as if he were looking at a puzzle that he didn’t have all the pieces to and it was Crowley withholding them. “Well, yes. You have to come into the shop to actually _be in_ the shop.”

Crowley would have pinched the edge of his nose if he had a hand free for it. “I can still _feel_ the sodding holiness you know. Not exactly great on the old infernal constitution. Can’t you just, you know, let them down long enough for me to get in? Doesn’t make a blind bit of difference what they’re doing once I’m inside.”

Aziraphale’s face did something oddly complicated at that and his fingers splayed awkwardly against his waistcoat, dancing along the edges in a nervous pattern. “Crowley, I would never- of _course_ I couldn’t- There’s space for you in the wards. I know that it would be safer to have them whole but I certainly couldn’t do anything that would trap you in here. I could be visited at any time and you’d need to be able to get out, without waiting on me dropping the wards. No. Best to keep them as they are. Willing to have you come and go as you pl- well, obviously not- but- just in case, you see, of course.”

There was that almost-warm feeling again, like something inside of him being filled instead of hollowed out. The angel could truly be ridiculous sometimes but the idea of actively trying to keep Crowley safe, even if it _was_ with a frighteningly close-knit warding system, was… Nice. Nice in a way a demon really shouldn’t enjoy quite so much.

Crowley grit his teeth and held his breath as he passed through into the shop and found that it wasn’t too bad. There was a small Crowley-shaped exception built into the defences. It seemed like the type of thing that could be cut off quickly; a slip stitch ready to make the fabric whole at the slightest pull, though Crowley got the feeling that the exception existed at all because Aziraphale assumed that he would never have reason to use it. That there was nothing to worry about with Crowley.

It pissed Crowley off a little that he was so damn sure he didn’t need to keep a better guard up. It was worse that he was right. Crowley caused a lot of harm but never purposely, knowingly to Aziraphale.

Despite the open passage through, Crowley still felt the press of divinity against his skin. It was almost nothing; the brush of a shoulder against a too-close stranger in the street. Years ago Crowley would have dismissed it. Ignored it. These days he was looking for it.

He shivered, skin itching at the intrusion of it, but steadied himself regardless as he brought out the chocolates and witnessed Aziraphale’s face light up. It was worth it, he decided. He just wouldn’t come here that often. They had rendezvous points for a reason after all.

And he _didn’t_ go that often. Not _really_. More than ‘hereditary enemies’ should, naturally, but that was why Crowley watched their backs for them.

Still, every so often when they were done with business and Crowley got bold enough to suggest dinner and drinks, they might end up at the bookshop. Over 200 years it was barely more than a dozen times. Crowley could still feel it, as acutely aware of the sensation as he was. It was nothing more than a gentle brush each time, sandpaper fingertips skimming continually across the edge of a jagged rock and finding a smooth pebble at the end of it.

It was so gentle, so unobtrusive, that Crowley started to wonder if it might be purposeful.

Aziraphale was a bastard. Aziraphale was the smartest being Crowley knew. Aziraphale was definitely not above dirty tricks.

How much was it his intention to take Crowley’s shape and to reform the outside of it into the Crowley-shape he’d woven into the shop wards? Smoothed out and bound up and, eventually, ground down to nothing.

The thought left some bitter taste in the back of Crowley’s throat; worse than the acid-bite of the sulphur pits he had clawed his way out of. The ragged edges of his self were being worn down and rounded out and chipped away at. There was every chance that Aziraphale meant every last chisel strike against the outside of him.

It was worse on the days Aziraphale denied their friendship even as they walked together. Those days the parts of him that were scraped away felt like Aziraphale attempting to peel off one more layer of the part of Crowley he couldn’t stand to be associated with. Like it didn’t matter if that was all that Crowley was. He wondered how much he’d want to take away before he could be satisfied with what was left. Before he could accept Crowley as he had been left: lesser and emptier but free of enough of Hell’s fingerprint to at least be _his._

Those were the days Crowley wanted to sleep away a decade and hope he woke to something less painful. The days he lashed out; at Aziraphale, or himself, or into some half-hearted temptation that was more cruelty than fine engineering. Left him truly feeling as small as the thing he feared he was becoming.

Crowley always came back. Of course he did, because there were other days too.

Days that he caught Aziraphale staring for just a little too long. Days where he saw something almost soft in his smile in the moments he thought Crowley couldn’t see. There were even days that Aziraphale hesitated before he denounced him; a nervous pull at his collar to reaffix his bow tie, a purse of the lips that belied the wish to say words other than the ones he felt he _had to_.

Crowley felt something else on those days. A creature dangerously like hope settling in his chest. One that was willing to hibernate a long winter in the promise of a some-day spring that he could be loved openly in spite of what he was. At his most hopeful, perhaps, just maybe, _because_ of what he was.

So it was worth it.


	4. The things you do in the name of what you love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In a church in 1941 Crowley burned with divinity. It took until the end of the war to dare to check how deeply it ran.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as usual to my beta [ OAbsalom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OAbsalom/works)
> 
> I hope everyone enjoys the angst and the Crowley point of view. This here is where we get a view of not-blood and it may be a little squicky for a few sentences.
> 
> Also massive thanks to everyone who's left a comment or kudos, I thrive on any and all encouragement for the pain I bring to the table.

Panic sang in Crowley’s ears. The distracting howl of how this was bad and wrong and _terribly fucking stupid._ He could feel the buzz of consecrated ground against the edges of his awareness.

_Why a church? Why a bloody church, of all places, for a hand off to Nazis?_

Yes, Crowley hadn’t been around much, had barely been able to look at Aziraphale since the other had denied him the one thing he’d really ever wished from him. Aside from The Arrangement.

_It would destroy you._

The thought still made his stomach swoop a little, despite the argument that had followed. It felt like, perhaps, the wards and the blessings really _weren’t_ meant to change Crowley. Perhaps Aziraphale truly had no idea of what it was doing to him.

Aziraphale _didn’t want_ him unmade. Unfortunately, the angel had also chosen consecrated ground for his meet up with an agent who was absolutely _not_ MI5 given the minor (less cool than he had hoped) spy work Crowley had been doing for them in the war so far. Likely she was part of Germany’s own double cross system.

All this thinking was, of course, just a way to dither to avoid the truth of what was in front of him; right at the edges of his apparent boots.

The howl of the panic was starting to push into an ache right behind his eyeballs, though the demon knew there was half a chance that the ache was also some defensive warning about how close he was to something very bad and could he _kindly step away_ please.

And of course he couldn’t. Because it was Aziraphale beyond. Aziraphale in trouble, and he was a demon of very clear desires and motivations.

Mostly it boiled down to:  
1) Keep life as easy as possible.  
2) Spread unmitigated chaos into the world and watch people go.  
3) Aziraphale

The motivations were not necessarily in that order and one of them tended to make one of the others a lot more difficult to achieve. Like when he was arranging to break into the middle of a Nazi ambush on consecrated ground to save a man-shaped being who could barely look at him some days. At least he could chalk it up to masochism and define it properly demonic to torture himself.

But yes, the stalling.

The stalling that was happening while the ambush was clicking into position beyond.

Crowley’s stomach lurched as he finally picked up his foot to move forward. Everything in his head screamed that this was wrong and stupid, trying to rip him away from this reckless course of action. The wind of his thoughts only howled the louder as he firmly ignored his core’s warnings and stomped forwards with determination.

Oh, how it burned.

It was nothing at all like the careful sandpaper-brush of Aziraphale’s wards or the sting of an unexpected blessing from a human, grateful for a kindness he shouldn’t have offered them. It was a burn like the desert at midday, like a sulphur bath that he’d just dipped his feet into and that was slowly rising to lick up against his ankles.

All thoughts of a gallant rescue immediately fled his head as the howling pitched to a scream and the edges of his vision seemed to go white. His ornamental heart picked up, pounding a frantic drumbeat as he wondered how much of this celestial cleansing was passing through his corporation and burning deep into his own self. Wondered how much of him would be missing at the end of this.

It almost felt natural to fall back on gentle, dithering human expressions of pain. So many years among them and suddenly he’s chanting “Ow.” Without even truly thinking of the thing as he trots himself down the central passageway of the church, trying his damnedest to keep as little of his corporation in contact with the searing burn of the ground as possible.

Crowley was barely aware of what was going on around him; focus tunnelled down to the soft white of Aziraphale’s hair by the distracting rush of pain through his corporation. The thugs at the front of the church fell into the background rush of warnings his mind was trying to give him in the face of the woman holding a gun to his blessed angel’s (too trusting) head.

His attention was only redirected when he heard Aziraphale accuse him of working with the Nazis. It was almost endearing, knowing that Aziraphale at least still considered him able to get on board with such depths of depravity and pure evil. Once again the humans were merely outdoing themselves with the lengths they could go to.

Admittedly though, the feeling that stuck around like tar to his bones as the slight preening pleasure passed by was offence. Aziraphale had already seen that humans did worse for themselves than Crowley ever had a hand in. All he ever needed to do was gently encourage them towards acting on their own desires or frustrations. They would find a myriad disproportionately worse responses than if he had some defined demonic goal in mind.

Besides, if Crowley understood anything it was that the four horsepeople didn’t differentiate in the things they destroyed. War, Disease, Hunger. They all steamrolled the good and evil alike towards Death. If anything it seemed to disproportionately affect the relatively innocent. Not to mention that Hitler was gunning after both his and the angel’s personal favourites: the Jewish, queer and traveller communities as well as people who asked too many intelligent questions.

No, most of these people wouldn’t even _go_ to Hell and Crowley hated rushing them to an early grave before they had a chance to choose wrong for themselves.

It made him sick, too, that they were relatively innocent and subjected to tortures that he couldn’t even stomach feeding back to Hell. He tried not to think about that too much. Wasn’t very demonic to be against torture, even if, well, he would see it put best by M*A*S*H at some point in the future. Out of war and Hell, war is a lot worse. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell.

Of all the things to pull his attention from pain, panic and the existential terror of thinking things that a proper, whole demon really shouldn’t; the thing that did it was, ridiculously, Aziraphale echoing back his new human alias. The almost judgemental but mostly curious voice was more interested in a new name than his potential discorporation.

Then he was off and babbling; and Satan knew what sense he made in and amongst. He knew he had to keep their attention focussed on him, long enough for his misdirection to give him chance to get Aziraphale to safety. Of course everything was _screaming_ and he could barely concentrate on the miracle to get the bomb to them in the first place never mind-

“What does the J stand for?”

Really? Now? He had a million of them. Suave little quips, callbacks to their time together, names that no longer existed. Instead all he could manage was “Just a J, really.”

Missed opportunity, but what could he do? There were Nazis, and a bomber to redirect, and a _font full of Holy Water just right there_ , and absolutely no way his energy could stretch far enough to save them now. He had to rely on Aziraphale, his brilliant angel, to keep them safe. The best he could do was reach the small remnants of his concentration for one last gift and hope that Aziraphale would save him too.

Then an explosion. The walls around them crumbling and the ground beneath shattering. Somewhere the blessed cornerstone cracked and continuing blaze of pain gave way into the tender, lingering agony of what damage had already been done.

Then, of course, to add insult to injury, Aziraphale looked at him with that gentle look and called him _kind_. He rolled his eyes and brushed it off, quickly getting his sunglasses on to hide as much of his expression from Aziraphale as he could. He didn’t know how well he’d keep it together otherwise.

Obviously even with the pain and the sheer drain of terror and the use of his powers Crowley couldn’t quite resist the urge to show off his newest pride and joy to the angel. He ran a hand along the Bentley as he opened the door up for Aziraphale; something almost reverent if demons could manage such a thing.

They couldn’t, of course. No reverence, no praise, no love left in them. That was the line from head office at least. Crowley hoped that it wasn’t true. He knew he was an outlier but not so far that he wasn’t an actual demon any more.

It wasn’t until they were settled in and Crowley was, very gingerly, driving them back to Aziraphale’s shop that the demon realised just how reticent Aziraphale suddenly was.

He turned enough to talk to him, spending only the barest amount of concentration for the broken and rubble strewn streets ahead of them. “You alright angel?” If his voice was softer than he’d care to admit he could always blame it on all of the other distractions.

“Hmm? Oh, yes, quite.” Aziraphale nodded, all distracted noises and nervous hands twisting around the handles of the bag.

Crowley heaved a sigh, feeling a tremble in his empty chest at one more _kindness_ he couldn’t deny his angel. For Aziraphale he wouldn’t want to deny it even if he could. He reached over and brushed his fingers over Aziraphale’s. Blink and you’d miss it but very obviously there for two supernatural beings on hair triggers.

Aziraphale jolted like there’d been a shot, another explosion. When he looked at Crowley it was like the proverbial deer in the headlights. The demon already had his hands back on the wheel, something gentle in his smile. “You alright, angel?”

Aziraphale wavered just slightly, looking down at the bag with a surprising intensity for a moment. “I just didn’t- I think I might-” he lapsed into silence for a moment, chewing his words over “I suppose I can’t help but wonder why you came for me. You didn’t have to.”

And Crowley was ragged and raw and so very, very tired. For one blessed moment he didn’t really care about keeping his cool or maintaining the careful distance that kept them safe near each other. “It was never a choice, Aziraphale. Not with you.”

“Oh.” It was barely a breath of a noise, one that tugged at something inside Crowley, but Aziraphale only nodded slowly and lapsed into silence.

When they reached the bookshop he clutched the bag to his chest like it was the most precious thing in the world and the pain in Crowley’s feet momentarily ebbed back enough to give him some clarity.

“Be safe, alright? Can’t save you every decade you know.” He grinned.

He watched as Aziraphale’s smile quirked up almost-bitter. “Yes, quite right. I- I won’t thank a demon, of course, but… oh, be safe as you go, Crowley.”

Crowley only snorted, tipping his hat just a little as both an acknowledgement and a way to hide the smile that was threatening. It could have been very nearly perfect, Aziraphale looking at him like that even while refusing to thank him, sweet as he was. Only, of course, it was at this point that the pain started to rise again without Aziraphale to distract him from it.

The drive to Mayfair was considerably faster, despite the raw ache of his feet on the pedals, as the terror of what he had just done loomed larger and larger in his mind with each minute. Each aching pulse of pain that luckily didn’t follow as quick as a human heartbeat would.

He was barely aware of the time passing between getting out of the car and being in his flat. He might have miracled himself there, for all his mind retained of it. Despite the speed of everything before that he found himself dithering again the second he was on his throne. He stared down at his feet, the shimmer of faint candlelight on snake scales doing nothing to calm the dread clawing at his empty chest and sinking into his lungs. He didn’t want to know. He wanted to never change from them again and never think about it and-

Unfortunately, he _needed_ to know, and he needed to do something quick to start the healing process if it had left a mark on him. It certainly felt that way. Felt deep enough to have done more than leave a lingering pain in his corporation. Just had to get it over with.

The howling started in his ears again and he was glad Aziraphale hadn’t insisted on seeing him home. Damaged. His _corporation_ was damaged. Spiderweb cracks of sores along the soles of his feet, weeping a black ichor that would likely desecrate any surface it touched.

He didn’t know if it was his body trying to smother and defile the hallowed place he had been or if… If this was a part of himself. If parts of him had been torn away and liquefied and were now _leaking_ from his broken corporation.

He knew for sure that the air raid sirens could have sounded in full in that moment and he wouldn’t have known it. The world seemed to go grey at the edges and the pulse points of pain picked up into something like the rhythm of a heart. Apparently the pathetic thing had been set off at some point.

He stood slow and very careful of his wounds before making his way to the kitchen where there had never been a small first aid kit exactly where he expected it should be. There was a numbness to everything but the screaming voices in his head as he methodically worked on patching up his physical form. The loudest sound in the room for a long time was the single gulp of apprehension as he pressed a rag of watered-down Dettol into the cracks of him.

The ichor stained through the rag, but after a while no more came through and Crowley focused down on his breathing and bringing colour back into the world as he carefully worked with barely a conscious thought.

He didn’t look until the end of the war. Celebrations in the street, Churchill blathering on about VE day, and a single demon who didn’t feel nearly brave enough shedding his skin for just long enough to glance sideways at what was left of him.

There was a pulse of darkness; a wave of fear that dampened the spirits of revellers as far out as Lambeth. The cavernous echo of the thing that would be a demon’s chest was even more ragged and torn open as he stared into the black hole of it. The scaled edges of him were sickly pale, ragged and torn, his eyes a milky almost-white over top of the usual bright yellow. What was there of him looked broken and incomplete. It was him, of course, but barely recognisable from the demon he had been at Eden, barely holding the edges of himself together any longer.

He fled back onto the flesh form he had left on the bed and shook and all but hyperventilated as he tried to piece together how much of it had happened _just right then_ and how much of him had been stripped away slowly over the centuries.

Then he went to sleep for another five years and when he woke decided once again not to think about it any more. It had worked well up to that point. Almost immediately he doubled down on his activity. He still wasn’t cruel, Crowley just didn’t have it in him, but he stepped up how far his temptations could reach and did everything he could to curb the urges to be kind, or nice, or any other four letter word that reminded him of the pieces of him slowly being torn away.


	5. Odds are, we're going to be alright

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end of the world approaches, and passes with relative peace for the humans, who can pass of the bizzare events as mass hallucinations or whatever is most comforting to them.
> 
> Broken, scoured and burned; a certain demon feels a lot under the surface about the way his hereditary enemy treats him. Still, the world is safe, and he's good enough now that this seems important.

For a time Crowley continued on as he had before; paranoid, completely smitten, and terrified as all Hell that he might get stuck in his broken true form if he dared shift into it. Aziraphale continued as he had before, too. For the most part.

The lingering looks these days lasted a little longer and every so often Aziraphale looked like he might want to reach out first. Naturally, Crowley saved him that trouble. A demon’s job to tempt, after all, and Aziraphale made that all too easy. And Crowley _was_ still a demon, of course. Still took assignments, still saw the worst bits of humanity hidden just below the surface.

He continued, for years, to hold to the singular fact that he was still being given assignments from Hell as some sort of life preserver in an ocean that was only getting rougher. A couple of decades, to be slightly more precise, but all of it came with the skittering feeling along his skin that nothing was truly right any longer. All of it came with a sickness in the pit of his stomach that cried out, urgently, that he was going to be caught out one day and that there would be no running or denying on that day. A sense, clinging to his ribs and stuck behind his eyelids, that there was a wave on the way.

So, for all that Crowley continued to be a demon, he started to think more seriously once again about the prospect of holy water. He was still certain that it would destroy him. Whatever else had happened to him he was certain that his heart and his choices would be ever punished by Her and that he would never be safe from his ex-brethren. He still knew that he needed what protection and weapons he could be afforded against his own kind if they ever discovered the changes in him.

He had almost choked around the lump in his throat when Aziraphale had come to him to offer up the holy water.

There was an almost tenderness in the way that he handed it over. The wetness in his eyes as he’d denied Crowley’s offer of a ride, the reflection of seedy neon lighting, was telltale enough of the angel’s changing heart.

When Crowley had returned home he couldn’t resist the urge to settle into his throne, legs thrown haphazardly over an arm, and cradle the ridiculous tartan bomb shell in his lap. He ran a thumb around the edge of the seal, heart hammering but eyes unfocussed as he wondered to himself what it would be like. He wondered how badly it would burn and if it would be as instantaneous as he assumed or if it would take longer to find the end of him it needed to unravel him from existence.

He could tip the flask and there was the slightest of pulls as the water redistributed itself. It was so full. Of potential, of fury, and reluctant tenderness. Crowley, in balance, felt empty of all the things he thought he was built from; all of the things he’d striven for after his fall in order to define himself alongside his own brethren.

He didn’t want to change but he already felt unmade. He’d been so proud of all that he was. Wonderful sin, pride was. All you had to do was be a little too happy with yourself, a little too full of all the things you could do. All the things you wanted to know and dared to think you were owed the answer to. If he wasn’t still so damned proud he knew he’d probably beg in moments like this: staring at a weapon in his hands and stripped of the things he’d managed to build after the warmth and comfort of love and certainty in Her had been stripped away.

_I don’t want to change. I’m a demon. I still belong somewhere even if it’s as shitty as Hell. Don’t take that from me. You can’t make me. Please don’t make me. Don’t unmake me. I was already thrown away. Why? Why isn’t that enough for You? Why are You always so hungry for the pain of the things You made?_

Too many questions. Always questions and no answers, though at least it wasn’t any less than the humans got and She’d _made_ them to question.

Crowley couldn’t help but feel oddly comforted in the centre of the maelstrom of it all. Questions might not be a necessarily _demonic_ trait but it was one of his and it was still there. The little markers that remained where sudden kindnesses and love had tainted him felt like the tiniest of lifeboats.

He hadn’t realised his own panic until he was uncurling from around the thermos clutched tight to his chest, blinking at the innocuous weapon. He sighed and moved off to put it into the safe, willing his thoughts to fuck off onto some other train of throught already.

For a while they did. He had his insurance and kept it out of sight and out of mind where possible. It felt as though he stood a chance of ignoring the repercussions now that he had something to ease the paranoia. Of course there was still the _other_ problem, and that wasn’t one so easily solved and put into a neat little locked box.

The thought,the endless question, of how much Aziraphale truly _knew_ haunted him almost as much as the change itself did. Every kindness and every change of heart now came with the added layer of wondering what Aziraphale saw that had changed his attitude so much. It was wrapped up a little in the existence of the thermos at all; and whether his naively optimistic angel might have seen through him, may be holding out hope that he was somehow different enough that the holy water wouldn’t harm him.

Then the Antichrist was delivered to him and his ill-fitting heart had dropped like a stone as he realised that he didn’t want it any more. Apparently it was one thing to work towards Armageddon in general terms, and quite another for it to actually happen. This, he was certain, was not a feeling any demon would have.

He had sworn and railed and very nearly sent his beloved Bentley off the road and into a ditch, but there was no denying that the instant anxiety and the urge to _help_ the humans was as far from the demonic thing to do as it was possible to get.

The only comfort in it all was that it was also definitely not angelic either. Which was why he knew that he needed to plan well to get Aziraphale on board. His angel had stood by on orders and let massacres happen before, if with small ‘concessions’ for Crowley’s ‘mischief’ in strategically saving what lives he could. This was a much bigger ask. So much more, to work directly against Her plan. To work directly to save what was truly good and not just Good.

The fact that this was what Crowley wanted; life and continuation and the kind of simple, complicated good that humans could achieve… It summarily ripped up, burned and scattered the ashes of any pretense Crowley had tried to hold onto that he was part of his own bigger picture. He was on his own, with only the trembling hope that Aziraphale might be with him too.

The years leading up to Armageddon held Crowley by the throat and on a hair trigger every waking second of every day. He was close to Aziraphale, where either of them could be found out, far too often. He couldn’t have stepped back from it if he tried, knowing as he did that if they failed there would be nothing left of him. He knew, deep inside, that he ran that risk even if they succeeded. It would take a miracle beyond either of them for both of them to survive this. With Hell already likely to end his existence for the thing that he was, sometimes it felt that the only hope left to him was to make sure that Aziraphale survived this.

~~~

Every moment for 11 years was spent in waiting for the axe to fall and desperately protecting the one thing he couldn’t have borne his existence without. Little surprise then, that he started to come a little more undone at the seams when they discovered that they had the wrong boy entirely.

One more good thing She couldn’t let happen. One more careless rejection, throwing away Her creations like poorly made tinker toys. Then Crowley, outside of it all with no place but whatever he chose in the moment. It was odd to think that the guidance of Hell and its threats of torture could be comforting but somehow he could have killed for some of the structure and surety that playing the evil demon card had given him across the years.

He was completely adrift and choosing his position on who to save, what meant more, whether he could love, from second to second as they hunted desperately for the real Antichrist. The pull of it seemed to take apart what few true parts of him he’d tried to cling to. He was a demon, wanted to be a demon, and found himself wandering an old nunnery thinking about saving it all from burning just because he couldn't see them all thrown away like he had been.

Falling had torn away the spark of good from Crowley but had somehow not stopped him from loving, firecrely and desperately. Having the evil removed from him had never filled that hole with anything else. It only made him more and more hollow until it felt like he was being held together by his own corporation rather than inhabiting it.

He ached for the certainty of evil or good back as he stood making these too-human choices; groping blindly in the dark for a thing that he wanted all his own. The panic was clawing at his throat, reminding him that he was without the smallest of life preservers against the oncoming wave of his kind finding out that he _wasn’t right_.

When Aziraphale had almost called him Nice. Out Loud. Inside a place that had been _dedicated_ to Satan… The buzzing fear had barely left his ears by the time he realised he had thrown the angel up against a wall; sibilance uncontrolled and salt-water in his lungs, behind his eyes. Not Nice. Not good. Not even evil anymore. Not _anything_ that it was worthwhile being.

He knew he could never be good. Was desperate to still be bad even as every decision took him further from the sight of a shore.

Aziraphale had looked at him like it was nothing; no fear at all of what a demon might do to him on his own ground. He stared at Crowley with a degree of patience that seemed to be just waiting for something. Maybe for Crowley to figure out that he _was_ nice. As if he didn’t know. As if it wasn’t everything that tore at his own sense of self. Because what was nice, for a fallen angel?

What was a Heavenly creature’s approval to someone who had been cast aside and burned every time he tried to approach?

He almost lost the strength in his legs at the relief of being interrupted when the ex-nun approached them. It felt like he could breathe again.

~~~

There were plenty of other opportunities in the next few days for Aziraphale to rub it in. He seemed to take some sort of enjoyment in those moments of revealing how much he understood of the change in him and what he thought he could do to make him something else; something more acceptable.

The bandstand had almost broken him. He’d lain it all out there in the open, begged Aziraphale to come away with him to safety.

It didn’t stop the same terrible refrains that electrified Crowley’s fears.

“You were an angel, once.” The proof there in the open that Aziraphale wanted him changed, wanted him only if he was no longer Crowley.

It was a long time ago. So long. The memory of belonging and knowing he was loved had faded almost beyond recognition. The last of it was only held to him by Her malice; never truly able to forget how foolish they had all been to think that Her love was boundless and unconditional. He didn’t think he could want that again even if it were possible to go back to the oblivious innocence of it.

There was still time, still a chance, and if all else failed the possibility of at least keeping Aziraphale safe. He could almost have smiled to watch him fall back on his old adage of angels versus demons if he wasn’t so desperately in fear of what was to come. Could have smiled if not for what came next.

“There is no ‘our side’, Crowley. Not any more. It’s over.” 

Somehow the admission that there had been, that there might have been something for them at some point, was worse than all of the denials that Aziraphale had levered against him before.

He wanted to fight it. The words were burning on his tongue. Aziraphale was talking as though he were still a demon but even Crowley didn’t know if that was true any more. They could be something else. They could be it together. It might not be so damn terrifying if they could be Not Beings together.

Some part of him still wanted it though. Wanted a place to belong no matter how they ground their own down and chewed them out. He ached to take that leap but in the second he opened his mouth to say it he could see Aziraphale turning away and pretending he didn’t see an outstretched hand. Letting him fall. He would always love Aziraphale but the angel would only love him when everything he chose and fought for was stripped away. He would always be the last possible choice, rejected until there was nowhere else to turn.

What else could he say to that? He felt the space yawning between them, impassable, as his jaw clicked shut around further pleas, against promises that he could be _something_ even if it wasn’t an angel. It would never be enough. All he could do was walk away, turned back from the one steady ship in the storm.

~~~

Outside of Aziraphale’s shop he had begged for their lives together. Tried one last hopeful rally at something evil. Leave the rest of the humans there to their fate and just have the two of them. Be selfish. Maybe be loved. It would be angelic for Aziraphale, too, after all. Heaven wanted their war and Aziraphale could be a right proper angel and step out of the way of their fight.

The urge to run, the plea to run, hammered in his heart like the desperate beat of wings. There was no quarter given to him. Of course not.

“I forgive you.”

That’s what he’d said.

Crowley’s wild gesturing froze, a mouthful of ocean water flooding his lungs, crashing into the stomach of him and beginning to freeze him up.

He’d felt the warmth of divinity in those words. It wasn’t an acceptance of Crowley’s (admittedly half-assed) apology; it was divine benediction. An attempt to take God’s forgiveness and provide it to a demon.

_Bind it to a demon._ His mind supplied, helpfully.

It rattled through Crowley like a leaden pinball, cracking against rib buffers, bounced by the paddles of his suddenly heavy lungs before dropping through the hole where his grace should be. Into the black-hole heart that was trying to keep Aziraphale safe.

He meant to ask something. _What._ Or maybe _Why._ Instead there was something blocking his throat and he couldn’t find a blessed word. He let his arm drop to his side as he searched for something, _anything,_ he could say in response to that.

_I could love you if you were an angel. There isn’t an our side, but you could come back to mine. I’ll take you. Just not as you are._

“Fine. Whatever.” Crowley swallowed thickly, the words somehow disjointed from his sense of himself. “I’m going home, angel. I’m getting my stuff and I’m leaving. And when I’m off in the stars I-” he swallowed around the pain of the thought “I won’t even _think_ about you.”

Aziraphale would always, first, choose Heaven if he could. That was good. Fine. Angels could be pricks but falling was Hell and he wouldn’t wish this on ~~his~~ the angel. He just thought that maybe Aziraphale could care about him even with their differences.. But Aziraphale didn’t want _Crowley_ , he wanted an angel with enough decency to treat him better than his bosses did. Crowley’s hands tightened around his steering wheel as he drove off.

Fine.

~~~

By the time he got to the air base... saw the very defiant, human child with the fear in him of all those changes that he didn’t want and never asked for… As tired as he was Crowley could still feel a pang of sympathy. He wanted the boy safe, wanted them all safe despite his damned soul and his damned self, but there was Satan coming and he would see straight through him even if Beelzebub hadn’t. He barely had enough to hold on as it was.

The dark edges of his true form were frayed and coming apart at the seams. He didn’t know if he’d survive the attempt. Didn’t have the strength to play saviour to the world. Didn’t _want_ to be saving people, not at the risk of sacrificing himself and there was so little left of him now. It was too good a thing to do. It was too much like what She expected the humans to do; destroy himself for others. To die for this.

He wondered, in a way that cracked something fundamental inside of him that shouldn’t still work, if that was what Aziraphale wanted too. Aziraphale, who’d taken in his drawn, weathered form and thrown that _forgiveness_ at him. Did he not know, or was it deliberate? The old debate circled in his head like a vulture.

By now Crowley could barely tell; the rush of possibilities on each side buzzing through the hollow shell of him but without the energy left to even try and make sense of them. He only knew that he was too tired, and that Aziraphale was asking just one more thing of him, and that he still after all these years didn’t know how to say no.

He rose from the ground with time holding still and he gave Adam the thing that he wished he had: his own choice. The Antichrist could never be truly human, not any more than Crowley could, but if he was to be cast out from the true connections he could make, then Crowley would spend the last flares in him to give Adam the time to choose it on his own.

He thought that there was something almost understanding in the way the kid squeezed his hand as the world clicked back into place and his decision reset the world around them.


	6. No angel passed through the silent tunnel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He was being accepted. By all rights he should be over the moon. This was what he wanted. All he’d ever _truly_ wanted for himself, and he couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe _in_ it.
> 
> In which Crowley feels his last tethers break and has no idea how to process the aftermath of being loved. And also shouts at Her. This is not a new thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always thanks to my beta OAbsalom who did her best to make this cohesive while (hopefully) providing a decent gut punch.
> 
> Please also note, this was definitely written _before_ driving up to Scotland as a cure for heartache was quite such a wildly bad idea.

Heart thumping, stomach twisting.

Even half alert and bound up, he could feel the drag of divinity against his demonic self; a wall of something pressing and pushing at his essence as he was forced through it by the angels. He bit down against the gag to hold in a scream of pain and terror as something burned away within him with a snap of clarity that may have been audible or may merely have been as clear as a miracle in his own mind.

He schooled his features into something much more confident than he felt. When they reached the top there was no smiting burn against his feet as he was manhandled backwards, scrambling for purchase. Not even the discomfort of bare feet on hot sand.

He could only hope that Aziraphale was safe tucked into Crowley’s own corporation. The demon no longer knew what he was and burned away with it was the assurance that he could withstand Hellfire.

Whatever he was now, it seemed that the thing that was holy or consecrated in the structure of Heaven no longer harmed him. Or that there was no longer enough of him left to harm.

A sick feeling twisted in his gut and he barely made a sound as he was tied up to a chair for the Archangels to berate ‘him’ about his performance, their successful avoidance of Armageddon. He just stared into the middle distance, face tight and still, only voicing the occasional random thought that popped into his head. He distinctly remembered saying something about barbecue though he couldn’t for the life of him think why beyond some poorly timed gallows humour. Apparently this was enough like Aziraphale in front of his bosses because they never once seemed to question his act.

The first time he really came back to himself was when the Disposable Demon came into view. The rushing in his own ears abated just far enough for him to feel hope brewing in his chest. He gripped the arms of the chair tightly and tried not to smile. It wouldn’t look great at that particular moment, especially when the demon asked if he could punch him. Could punch _Aziraphale_. At which point Crowley at least didn’t have to fight a smile any longer as he focused on making the low-ranking shit stain think again about his request.

He used his time staring the demon down to catalogue what was going on in the little multiplicity’s head. Disposable Demon looked almost gleeful before his expression started to falter at Crowley’s unspoken challenge. Under it all was an obvious discomfort with being in Heaven but not a physical one; not the burning away of his essence.

Crowley’s thoughts started to wind around themselves again as he dared to wonder if his own lack of reaction was more a feature of Heaven than proof of a change in him. He tried looking over the demon in the time that he had; hoping to suss out if he’d just been granted some kind of protection. There was some press of power that felt like it could be protection but it could also just be that Heaven was neither as holy nor as consecrated as some of them would expect.

Then he was gone and Crowley couldn’t be sure. But the other had walked into Heaven like it was nothing so maybe Crowley’s own lack of pain wasn’t quite the cause for panic he feared.

He still felt it though; the lingering ache of something gone from him that set the anxiety working at the back of his mind. He was barely aware of the attempted execution. Enough to give some soft angelic platitudes; to offer forgiveness for what they were about to do. Toe the party line even as they offered him up to extinction. Because Crowley could convince him to save himself but on his own Aziraphale would have wanted to trust Heaven even this far. Tried to make them see even up to the end.

It might be his end too.

Then it wasn’t. He stepped into the Hellfire and it was as warm and welcoming as Crowley had always known it to be despite the missing pieces in him. There was a kind of vicious glee in using that knowledge to send a stream of the stuff right for the Archangels and he knew the smile he gave them was more demonic than Aziraphale would ever acquiesce to. They fucking deserved it though. He’d heard one thing loud and clear after all.

_“Shut your stupid mouth and die already.”_

Crowley was never more glad that he’d walked himself down to Hell. It made him feel sick that self-righteous pricks like that were allowed to still call themselves holy. And if those were the ones She kept around… He might not like Satan or working for Hell much more than the sterile holier-than-thou nature of Heaven but at least down there they knew what they were.

Up here they used being Right as an excuse for all the ill they wrought on the world. Sanctimonious assholes. He was back out of the door the second he was given leave, fussing anxiously at Aziraphale’s shirt cuffs the entire way. Sauntered vaguely right back to Earth and this time without a look back. She could keep it.

When he was back on solid ground he went to their meeting point as quickly as he could, no longer caring if he was being watched. Heaven likely wouldn’t be interested in anything but what had gone wrong for a while yet anyway. Part of him just wanted the switch-back over with as soon as possible; back into his own body and determinedly not thinking about what had just happened. Part of him was worried that the final crack in his own self may have done something to his corporation and he just needed to know for certain that Aziraphale had come through it okay. That he was safe and well and whole.

It was a terrifying wait. He fidgeted almost enough to continue to make a passing Aziraphale, or at least he _would have_ if it wasn’t for the restless way his limbs splayed out. When he finally saw his own face, unharmed and very smug indeed, he felt his heart clench in his chest.

He knew what glory lay beneath the skin and couldn’t wait to get it back to its proper place.

Even trapped in Crowley’s skin and with sunglasses protecting his eyes, there was something soft in the way Aziraphale looked at him out of his own face. Something almost truly good. Crowley could have broken down there and then with the confusing mixture of relief and horror that passed over him in a wave to see that expression.

Instead of that he played it all off, laughing perhaps a little too loudly and egging Aziraphale on as he told him about the way he had goaded both the other demons and Michael herself whilst in his form. Vigilant as ever Crowley didn’t miss the slight tightening of Aziraphale’s hands, clutching the fabric of his trousers when he mentioned holy water. The way he had always tried to keep Crowley safe from the stuff, he was hardly surprised that it was a sore spot for the angel.

Crowley was proud of him, honestly he was, but that worry was lurking beneath the whole time; providing the whole conversation with a sharpness that frayed his nerves. Aziraphale didn’t seem to have sensed or noticed anything during the switch. But he was so pleased. Was part of it because he had more of what he wanted than he let on? That he had recognised the break in Crowley and was terribly pleased with himself for that, too? Crowley couldn’t help but feel those stones in the pit of his stomach, the whole stack of them that had formed their own little battered Stonehenge of fear and aching disappointment over the years.

He tempted his angel to dinner, which was nothing new. What was new was how attentive he was; turned in, offering quiet conversation even while he was eating, and continuing to look at Crowley with that softness in his gaze that twisted up his poor rotten heart. Fond and looking at him and _Looking_ at him and Crowley couldn’t stay, didn’t stay that night when Aziraphale invited him in.

He’d tossed up some piss poor excuse or another. He was tired, there hadn’t been time to rest while trying to practice as each other the night before and he was running on fumes.

It wasn’t exactly untrue and he could see the honest concern for him flit across Aziraphale’s face even as the angel reached out and grasped the edge of _Crowley’s_ jacket to gently worry at the edge of the fabric.

There was a soft “My dear-” the angel’s usual pleading eyes coming to the fore for just a moment before he seemed to shake it off, letting his hand drop away “but no, of course. Take care, dear boy, and don’t let it be one of those epic sleep sagas where I don’t have the chance to see you for a decade.”

“You worry too much angel,” he’d shrugged even as he lied through his teeth “I’m not exactly going anywhere. Same side now, right?”

Aziraphale had looked relieved and the warmth that radiated from the smile he got in return made heat prickle somewhere at the backs of the demon’s eyes. Unwanted and dismissed almost immediately. “Quite right.”

Crowley spent the next few weeks spending every moment that wasn’t sowing chaos or with Aziraphale just pacing his flat and trying to work out what was going on in the angel’s mind. He was being accepted. By all rights he should be over the moon. This was what he wanted. All he’d ever _truly_ wanted for himself, and he couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe _in_ it.

Every moment with Aziraphale he was second guessing the other’s motivations, searching his words for any sign that the angel only now wanted him because of the thing inside of him too broken to be fixed. That he was only wanted for the thing he had never wanted to be.

It made every gentle word from Aziraphale discordant in his ears. Made every gentle brush of their hands, every soft, seeking gaze tainted with an acid bite of divinity that should burn.

One night as they were curled on the bookshop couch pleasantly drunk and rambling about… lakes? He wanted to say it was lakes. Anyway, Aziraphale had looked at him, all of their usual barriers set aside, with that slightly smitten-slightly hungry expression that Crowley was coming to be familiar with. His gaze had lingered overlong on Crowley’s lips and as he slowly leaned in Crowley found that instead of feeling relief or longing there was only that same sense of terror that had washed over him the first time he had seen himself partially burned by mezuzot.

He was up and running (some would say stumbling, but Crowley was a demon of style and did _not_ stumble) from the shop almost immediately with an “I’m sorry” or “I can’t” or an “I don’t-” Maybe even all three. He didn’t turn back to see the stricken look that crossed the angel’s face.

He decided to take some time thinking to himself. Some time doing something and settled on going up to Glasgow. It was, most definitely, not an attempt to run away from his problems. It was _certainly_ not so obviously close because he was certain that the angel would never follow him in the way that he had sought out the angel over and over through the course of their tenure on Earth. It was because he could take the Bentley and have something familiar with him as he spent the entire five hour journey arguing as both prosecutor and defense about how Aziraphale’s altered behaviour had only come about because Crowley was so changed as to be unrecognisable from the snake in Eden.

He went to St Mungo’s Cathedral; the first place he had ever performed a miracle in Aziraphale’s stead. He remembered the priest distinctly – as shocked as Crowley was by the divine revelation he was receiving. He remembered the slight fizz of something sparking at the edges of his form when he’d first approached the grounds. Remembered having to perform the miracle at a distance.

Now he barely hesitated as he moved past the gates, and even then the flinch of hesitancy was more instinct than necessity. It didn’t hurt.

He strode into the church with a glint of purpose in his eyes that didn’t match the jumbled mess of thoughts bouncing around in him. He didn’t stop to contemplate the way his feet didn’t burn. He had suspected as much and it only seemed to fit the kind of irony that coloured his existence. Instead he bit down on his lip, jaw tight as he gazed up into the rafters, to the beautiful stained glass windows. He thought with annoyance of the cost and excess that it had taken back in a time when the poor could have used alms a lot more than a new depiction of John in a south facing window.

He didn’t know what he’d expected, to finally be able to walk safely inside a church. He hadn’t expected this anger. This resentment.

It simmered along his skin and trembled in hollow bones as he let his feet lead him along stone worn gentle by the passage of thousands of worshippers. He passed by the little shop and information stand: obviously taking tithes from the worshippers wasn’t keeping the lights on like it used to.

When he found himself in front of the steps up to the chapel his jaw tightened further until he could feel the teeth creaking with strain in his mouth. He turned away and down into the undercroft. Into the heart of the church. As he passed under he felt himself trapped by the stone. Entombed in what was holy and consecrated. Not a shiver.

He walked by a school group as he passed into the lowest part of the undercroft, barely acknowledged as they listened to their teacher with varying degrees of interest. Crowley couldn’t even find it within himself to encourage some mischief, even though there was enough to be had in a church with a group of bored teenagers.

It all felt so hollow.

Crowley hadn’t necessarily stopped trying to speak with Her when he fell but he did understand that he was about as well heard as human prayers ever were. He knew that She wasn’t there, not for him. Now even the thing that had been put in the place of his grace had been scooped out by the cupful, the spoonful, and finally scraped down to the bone of him like Aziraphale trying to catch the last dregs of a particularly delicious soup.

He was still winding around the thought of it when he realised that he was in a small prayer alcove. Little cards asking for suggested prayers, a box for donations, a single layer of faux red velvet and the traditional cross.

He reached out, half wondering if handling a cross in a church would do something at least. Instead, at the last moment, he dropped a quid into the box and stared defiantly up at the ceiling. The altar and the pulpit were above him, he knew. As above, so below.

“You’ve got a lot to fucking answer for, You know.” Crowley hissed, soft enough that the kids wouldn’t hear it but without even the hint of a waver as he looked unblinkingly upwards, fists clenched tight enough to almost puncture the skin.

“Leaving Aziraphale to the Metatron? Giant headed prick. All the destruction in Your name? Can’t ever just fucking leave them be And now this? Whatever it is, I don’t want it. Take it back. Or _put_ it back. I made my own decision. I’d do it every time. I’m a demon. Now _give it back._ ” He ground out. There was a sting, finally, but it was only something hot and unwelcome at the backs of his eyes as he bared his teeth up at cold, old stone.

There was, of course, no answer.

“Fine. Fine, whatever. You don’t deserve their worship-” he turned, about to storm off but instead spun back and pointed an accusatory finger up to where She was not; because the time and space of God and the Heavens doesn’t necessarily work with the human concept of Up “Or you do. Everything they think up to do in Your name. Worse things than a demon could imagine, all in the name of which of their gangs is holier.”

Which of course it was, just some eternal turf war wherever he looked. Then there was Adam. The Antichrist who had stretched himself out and expended his power in doing what he thought was the right thing. Even when it left him changed; perhaps _because_ it left him changed. Something more human, because he had seen what was worthwhile in the life he had lived.

Whatever he was now, and whatever he wasn’t, the choices had been his in the end. Even the ones motivated by his angel. It was his choice as much as the Fall had been and he couldn’t really look back and think of a single thing that he would change. He let out a breath he didn’t need and with it some of the fight went out of him too. He turned his back again on the little altar and made his way to the exit, feeling heavier than he had any right to.

As he walked out Crowley spotted a wooden throne; either a replica of something older or a new addition. It had the inscription _Per Ardua Ad Astra._ Crowley froze, almost screamed, and rushed out of the church like he truly was burning.

If it was God mocking him She had some nerve about it. But so be it, if She wanted more adversity for him then he’d give it to Her. Break himself against the inevitable, reliable wellspring of pain that he’d been avoiding the full truth of ever since he first realised that he could still feel love. That _his_ love would never be given back so long as he couldn’t be granted _Hers._

It was time to ask for the truth from Aziraphale.


	7. I feel overjoyed when you listen to my words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley finally talks to Aziraphale and gets answers he's been avoiding for millennia. He also gets the chance to put things into words that he's avoided looking at too closely since his fall. Luckily his angel is much more receptive than he fears, though a lifetime of keeping up with heaven's expectations isn't an easy thing to shake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter's a long one (compared to the others) but it didn't feel quite right to break it up anywhere so it's here in all its glory.
> 
> As always a huge thanks to [ OAbsalom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OAbsalom/works) for being my beta and making sure things generally make sense.

By the time Crowley reached Soho he was no longer nearly as single-mindedly determined as he had been on setting off from the church. All of the demonic imagination in the world (of which Crowley did indeed own the whole supply) couldn’t make the drive from Scotland to London go quickly enough to prevent Crowley’s anxiety from carefully setting spiderweb cracks of doubt in amongst his admittedly vague plan.

Of course, that was the kicker of it. He knew what he was going to do, sort of. The long and short of it was to turn up at the bookshop and just _ask_ Aziraphale, demand really, demand was a more demonic word, _demand_ Aziraphale tell him exactly how much he had known about the changes to him. When he had finally decided he’d been stripped bare enough for the angel to start showing a modicum of affection.

Problem was he didn’t really know so much how you went about wording that sort of question. Or how near to the door he should be in case it went badly and he needed to not be there any more. Any number of things, really. All the questions tangled up in his head about what to say and where this would all lead and left him only with the vague sense that he wasn’t going to like the answers.

The problem was that he couldn’t keep pretending that everything was fine; even to keep the moments of tenderness that Aziraphale was finally willing to share with him.

Light was just starting to clutch at the edges of the sky when Crowley finally arrived in Soho. Not that the time of day really mattered; for either the shop’s opening hours or the wakefulness of its resident. Crowley stayed in his car, hands still clenched around the steering wheel as he tried to rack his brains for the words he would need inside. He could talk circles around the denizens of Hell back when he needed to and yet nothing felt right here. Aziraphale had always been harder to remain calm around and approaching the loss of his identity with the other felt like a Sisyphean task.

He was still considering when he realised that the light that he was seeing wasn’t from the steadily brightening sky but was the warm glow of the bookshop, partly obscured by a figure in the doorway that looked as trapped by indecision as any unwanted creature would be by the wards in place.

The thought of the fizz of those wards against the shell of him finally spurred Crowley into movement. His empty heart hammered with the lack of clear words but they would come. They always did.

As he approached the door he tried to rise to the occasion with his usual bravado, offer something off the cuff about Aziraphale waiting up for him, and for one of the few times in his existence found the heaviness in him stronger than that task. The pressure of it only seemed denser when he crossed the threshold with none of the familiar grating buzz.

Aziraphale moved aside to let him in and dithered for a moment. It took Crowley a beat to realise that the angel was waiting for him to start. He opened his mouth around a tangle of words just in time for Aziraphale to ask if he wanted a tea or a hot cocoa.

“Don’t… nah.” He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know if I’ll be here that long.”

Aziraphale seemed to pull in on himself at that, just a little smaller as he offered a slow nod in response. “Oh, I see. Well… You see the thing is…”

Crowley waited for a few breathless seconds to see if there would be more but the angel seemed lost for words. “Look I- We need to talk.”

The demonic phrase seemed to snap the angel out of his discomfited reverie and he looked up to Crowley again, his face a cascade of fear and sorrow. “Oh Crowley, I’m sorry. I truly am.”

Crowley froze despite the hot fear that seared the pit of his stomach. Of course there was no way that Aziraphale could know what he was about to ask but it didn’t stop the sudden apology from sparking every bit of paranoia that had wound itself around him like a constrictor.

“I didn’t mean for- We can just go back to how things were, can’t we? I’m sorry for misunderstanding everything so spectacularly. I thought that you wanted something more than friends but that doesn’t mean that we _can’t_ remain as friends if that’s all that you wish for.” Something melancholy crept into Aziraphale’s smile as he wound his hands around themselves. “All this time thinking that I was holding us back and it was never a thing you wanted in the first place. Of course not, I mean- but still I thought. Quite foolish of me, really. Terribly presumptuous. I suppose I must have sounded quite odd all those times asking you to be patient for me when you were never looking for anything of the sort.”

“What? That’s not- Sodding _Heaven_ , Aziraphale,” Crowley groaned, pushing the heels of his hands into his eyes as he wondered how the conversation got so off track so _soon._

The demon paced the length of the shop before throwing himself onto the couch at the back, wishing that he’d had a drink at some point on the way back; something a lot stronger than bloody tea. “I’ve wanted more for- for centuries. That’s not the point, is it? The point is that you changed _now,_ and I can’t exactly pretend that’s some grand coincidence. I don’t know what it means. Don’t know if you only chose me because there’s nothing else left. Can you really say that if Heaven hadn’t thrown you away you wouldn’t still just be playing at hereditary enemies?”

“No, I chose to _let_ them have all the rest because I wanted to choose you. Wanted it for so long.”

“Yeah, wanted to and didn’t, angel. Every time you didn’t, because I was a demon, because you still wanted their acceptance more than anything I could gi-'' He snapped his mouth shut around the sentence. Too much, too emotional. He needed answers and that line of thought didn’t lead to any place he intended to explore. He was already a drowning man at sea without swimming towards the huge fucking sign declareing _Here There Be Dragons._

“No.” Aziraphale shook his head slowly, the word barely coming out at a whisper. “I… I wanted you safe, that was all. You had to go back to Hell. Whatever happened to me… I couldn’t imagine what would happen to you if Hell found out that I… cared for you. Or that you might care in return.”

“So you tried to make sure I wouldn’t have to.” He ground out the accusation before he could decide it wasn’t the best track to take.

The confusion that passed over Aziraphale’s face seemed genuine but could have easily been a product of the abrupt change in subject. “I… I suppose denying you in the way I did could easily be construed as my attempting to reduce those feelings in you. I think I would have preferred that, if it could have made you safer, but I think that I always hoped that we would be safe one day to...” he sighed deeply “I suppose I’m not entirely certain _what_ I wished for.”

“Aziraphale,” Crowley sighed out a long breath that left him feeling almost hollowed out enough to withstand the next few words. Almost. “I want to know how much you knew about the blessings, the consecrated ground, all of it. How soon you knew about the change, how much of it you encouraged. Just… I just need to know, Aziraphale.”

There was a long pause and when Crowley dared the look up Aziraphale was regarding him with a type of thoughtful scrutiny that made the demon feel flayed open. “What change?”

“Don’t pretend, angel.” Crowley snapped, wishing for a glass of something to knock back and looking balefully towards the back room. “M’not a demon. Not any more.”

“Well, I suppose since we’ve been fired-”

“Don’t fuck with me Aziraphale. Not the sodding prophecy. This has been happening for years, all the good and the blessings and I’m not a demon any more.” _Not an anything any more,_ his mind added helpfully.

“Oh. I- actually I _didn’t_ know that. Isn’t that a relief though? Not having to go back there? Not being beholden to do such terrible things?”

And there it was. The self-assured sense that it was better to not be a demon, that he should be happy, of all things, to have every layer of himself carved away into nothing. Crowley did want to feel _something_ about the assurance that Aziraphale hadn’t known but it was all bound up in the idea of the _terrible_ things he had done. A damn good job, that’s what he’d done. Not to mention nothing that was in the vicinity of worse than sitting back and watching an act of God cause genocide.

“ _A rel-_ You’re so stupid about some things! I’m- I was supposed to be a demon. I _liked_ my job. You can’t even _imagine_ a world where, God forbid, I might be _proud_ of what I am- was?”

“Wha- What could you possibly mean?”

“Sauntered downwards?” Crowley jeered, chest heaving and teeth bared where he dearly wished there were fangs. “Sauntered, angel. I took every last fucking step. I’m a _demon_ , it’s in the job description.”

The implications of his own words loomed over Crowley like a cresting wave in the open ocean. ‘I’m a demon’ wasn’t true any longer. No job description. Just a free agent casting about himself for a life preserver and too afraid to try any sort of miracle any longer to even get himself a blessed drink from Aziraphale’s cellar.

The angel did at least look as though he was considering hitting the bottle himself. There was a desperation to the anxious twisting of his hands that Crowley had only seen at the height of the maybe-Armageddon. “No, that’s not. I don’t- of course you should be proud. I care- Oh, I _loved_ you that way, always. Love you still, no matter what’s happening. But Crowley, you're not making any sense.”

Crowley snorted, wondering if Aziraphale really could be so dense. What were the chances he’d missed _everything_ this whole time? “I’m not a demon, Aziraphale. All the blessings, all the fucking- the consecrated and hallowed and- I don’t think there’s anything left inside the corporation. It’s too late to do anything about it but I just… Needed to know if that’s why. The Arrangement, the calling me good. Worked for your agenda in the end, didn’t it?”

Aziraphale half-reached out to Crowley , hand trembling before he snatched it back towards himself, seeming to think better of the gesture. “I… I never, honestly. Crowley, how could you think that of me?”

“What? Like you didn’t try and get me to ask for forgiveness? Beg Her to take me back? Really, that was supposed to give me some other idea about what you think of me, _angel?_ ”

Crowley saw Aziraphale’s face fall and knew that he’d finally pushed through his masks of innocence and denial. Or that using the word angel like a weapon for the first time in six millennia had sunk something home. “I never wante- Crowley, please, you must believe that wasn’t my intent. I never thought, I just… I thought we could be safe together, if you didn’t have to go back to Hell.”

“Yeah, angel? And that little hole in the wall you built? Just large enough to skin the edges off me but _no_ couldn’t possibly be expected to drop them to let a demon through. That was an accident was it? Not your intent? Keeping all that just close enough to me to change the shape of the demon into something you could-” His jaw was tight, eyes wild but even with so much anger, so much terror, Crowley found that he couldn’t force those last words out through the sudden tightness in his throat.

“I never meant-” Aziraphale only shook his head, looking dumbfounded for a moment before he finally found some words. “It was for you. I knew the shape of you. I always knew you. I wanted you to feel welcome here.”

“You were never once worried about what a demon might do? You knew I was losing it! You-”

“I thought we were-” Aziraphale clasped a hand over his own mouth, eyes brimming with moisture “You’re the serpent of Eden. You’ll always do wrong. I just thought that it was different for you and I. I thought I lo- thought you might be, too. But perhaps no demon is capable. I’m sorry. I never should have- never meant to-”

Crowley saw the sorrow, the growing resignation, written across Aziraphale’s face and felt something cracking in the hollow centre of him, even amidst the anger and the fear.

“You never even thought it was strange? How different I was becoming? You even kept saying I was nice. Never thought that was weird? Or the, y'know, less... evil-ness coming from me?”

“No I… Well, I was changing too, you see.” For a moment something caught between fear and hope lurched in Crowley’s chest but the way Aziraphale was looking at him wasn’t with the air of a grand revelation, only with everyday regret and uncertainty. “I always just assumed we were always moving towards each other. We were so close I just thought that I was too familiar with you to even notice any longer. Some days you were so much a part of the background of my- Well... I couldn’t have imagined it had such a devastating consequence for you.”

“You really weren’t trying to speed this along, angel? You swear it?”

Aziraphale shook his head, choked around the first few words that tried to come out before finding his voice. “Of course. I’m sorry, I never meant to- never wanted to make you feel that you were anything other than- I’m sorry that I did.”

It was the earnestness of it that finally got him. A bit too much, too deep into his feelings all at once. The demon pushed his glasses back up for cover and shrugged a shoulder as he leaned back against the couch, a picture of nonchalance. “S’been happening for years. All those blessings, dancing about on consecrated ground like a prat. Suppose I should have expected it really. All done now.”

Aziraphale, it seemed, had other ideas than letting him save face. “I’m sorry I never noticed. I’m sorry I let you go through this alone. I don’t know how much I could have done differently, perhaps I still would have thought that separate was protected, but I wish i could have given you something all these years.

“Either way it’s over and done with. Can’t change the past. I’m hollow now. Nothing left of me. Felt the last of it go when they dragged me into Heaven. Hallowed ground and all that. Don’t even know if I could do a miracle.” Someone, he wished he had a drink.

Aziraphale’s whole face tightened at that, lips pursed. “No, of course you’re not! I- it could mean _anything_. Have you even checked? Is that something you can check? Heaven isn’t nearly so sacred as a place of true human worship. They were ready to kill an angel after all… Right?”

“It’s gone, Aziraphale. I felt it. Clear as I felt the grace leaving me. Trust me, I know all about things you can’t get back. Like a catherine wheel you didn’t hammer hard enough into the fence.”

The angel didn’t even try to give him a smile, though honestly it wasn’t one of his best jokes so Crowley supposed he couldn’t blame him.

“Have you tried? One of your little demonic miracles, I mean.”

He sighed deeply, carefully not meeting the angel’s gaze. He couldn’t stand seeing all that blind hope where he could _feel_ that he’d been separated from Hell. “Had a couple of necessary ones work fine. Doesn’t matter though. Could be reserves, or just that they haven’t thought to cut me off yet, or anything. Fact is my… My whole _thing,_ my” his gaze shifted to little trinkets they’d found at markets together, Aziraphale’s hoard of books, a suspicious mould-like patch on the wall; anything to not meet the other’s eyes “essence... it’s gone, broken. Something. I’m not me anymore.”

He heard Aziraphale suck in a breath that sang with _pity_ and somehow it was worse than Crowley had imagined the look would be.

“That simply can’t be.” He finally said, as though it were a simple statement of fact. It set Crowley’s teeth on edge.

“Look angel, I know what’s happening, alright? I’ve been living with it for millennia. You can’t say no and expect it to magically work out. Not with Her.”

Aziraphale, who had successfully used exactly that technique on several occasions, would beg to differ but didn’t feel like breaking into that particular argument just yet. “No, I mean it can’t. If this happened while you were in Heaven.. Crowley I _felt_ you changing places with me. What I mean is that I certainly didn’t tip myself out into an empty vessel. There must be _something_ there, dear boy, whether it’s demonic or… otherwise.”

Crowley’s first thought was to deny it: he’d seen himself torn and half formed and didn’t care to risk shedding his skin entire just to check. His second thought was _What’s an otherwise?_

He could feel the fuzzy static of indecision inside of himself. He was too afraid to look, didn’t want that memory or the proof of what was left behind. He needed to know, though. Crowley had always asked questions and this was one more thing that he couldn’t let be unanswered.

“What if you could be..? Crowley I know you’re proud of the decisions you made but what if you were the only one thinking with enough compassion to be changed back? Or something new? We never had a clue about demons until they happened.”

He was treading lightly around the words but they still felt like splintered glass on the floor. Still set an ache in the hollow parts of him.

Crowley hunched over himself, pulling away from Aziraphale a little. “I don’t want Her. But I don’t want to be nothing. I feel so empty.” The words felt like they were being pulled from his throat, the last barely a whisper as he stared into his own open, empty hands with unseeing eyes.

He felt more than saw Aziraphale as he sat down next to Crowley, his own hands dithering still between reaching out and wringing around each other. Eventually he laced fingers tightly together as though he could stop them giving anything away. That was fine. Crowley didn’t want to take one more single solitary thing that he wasn’t given freely.

“I’m sorry Crowley. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be alone in something like this again. But...” His hands flitted around as though casting about physically for ideas. Crowley thought that he might find it endearing if he could feel anything other than a dull ache in his chest.

“You can call it what it is, angel. Cast out. Again.”

“Well they were wrong. She was wrong!” Aziraphale looked about as surprised as Crowley felt to hear those words come out of his mouth. “Maybe it’s something to try and make it right. You never should have fallen. Oh, Crowley, you’re far too brilliant and _good_ for that and I know you don’t like the word but Heaven just never held a candle to you and-”

He froze when he saw the demon’s shoulders shaking, terrified that he’d gone and ruined things. “I’m so sorry, Crowley. I shan’t call you it a-”

“Nah, angel. S’just I used to think the same about you.” Ever so slightly the demon lowered his glasses, the despair in them slightly brightened by the love that Aziraphale could only ever feel by cracked facets of its true light. “‘Till I got up there at least. Problem is we’re too human. You’re _better_ than Heaven, that’s the problem. They’re supposed to be as good as it gets, right? Because they’re right? So what do you call something better than that lot?”

There was a kind of helpless adoration in Aziraphale’s gaze, completely new but slightly akin to the look he got talking about Choe Yun-ui and the first moveable type. “I don’t know. What do I call you? Whatever this thing is, I think you get to choose the name.”

“Hyrk,” said Crowley, something dull but true thudding in his chest.

He considered Aziraphale’s hopeful eyes on him. Considered his own questions and finally decided “I need a drink for this” before shifting up onto his feet.

Aziraphale was immediately up too and fussing. “Oh, yes. Tea or, ah something…” he caught Crowley’s look and nodded “yes I suppose you’re right. Something a little stronger perhaps.”

By the time he returned with four glasses, two bottles of wine and a decent bottle of whiskey Crowley had shed his jacket and was beginning to stretch out his neck muscles as though there was any way to physically prepare for what was about to happen.

Aziraphale fell silent, eyes fixed on the wonderful being whom he’d let suffer in (relative) silence over the centuries. Even now, even after it all, he was willing to be so vulnerable in front of Aziraphale. The knowledge of how precious that trust was hit the angel with such sudden force that he very nearly had to sit down. As it was he set the glassware down a little firmly and Crowley looked back at him worriedly.

“I… I’m sor-”

“Look, I know angel. No need to keep beating the dead... thing.”

“Let me finish, Crowley,” the angel admonished, though there was little real heat behind it. If anything there was a hint of their old bickering arguments that set another spark up in the dark cold of Crowley’s empty chest. “I’m sorry it took me so long to come around to their being a side that’s just ours, but if anything goes wrong I’m here.”

Crowley let out another harsh noise in the back of his throat and turned away, downing half of the proffered glass of wine without daring to look back. He didn’t trust his voice to manage anything more than that and instead focussed all his energy onto unnecessary breaths and counting himself down from 10 about four times before he finally found the courage to slough the flesh from his form.

“Oh.”

There was silence following the little exhale and Crowley set about trying to twist himself into a position to view his own form, anything that was left, felt it rebelling. Instead he spun to face Aziraphale despite the odd sense of vertigo at the moment. “For fuck’s sake Aziraphale, _what?_ You can’t just do that and not bloody- how bad is it?!”

“I’m afraid I don’t really know.”

Somehow that was more alarming and Crowley tried to twist around himself again only to find the world upending as he spun around himself. Too small, so much smaller than he had ever been before.

“You look… very nearly human. Crowley?”

He turned again; the world righting itself underneath him and Aziraphale’s hands landed on cheeks that did indeed feel very much like his own corporation. For a moment. Then something shifted and he was longer. Aziraphale seemed unsurprised by this, shifting his touch to make room and continue to cradle him.

He opened his mouth to speak and found it pulled into something more human again. When he spoke, though, it wasn’t with soft sibilance or his own drawl but with thousands of voices pressed together, echoing over each other in a discordance that was at once hypnotic and terrible. “What- what is it? What happened?”

Aziraphale worried at his lip, thumbs brushing carefully over cheeks before dropping to the angel’s sides. Crowley wanted to close his eyes but found that even when he did it felt as though he were still seeing just as clearly; still feeling and understanding in a hundred thousand different ways.

“I couldn’t honestly tell you what, though it certainly doesn’t appear to be traditionally angelic.”

Crowley relaxed just a fraction at this and Aziraphale’s gaze skittered between his eyes with his own faint smile of relief. “It isn’t entirely your face though, my dear. It’s… it’s so many of them. I think I may even recognise some.”

“Recog- what do you mean recognise?” He demanded, the sound no louder for his anger. Instead it seemed that the number of voices in the chorus of him swelled in challenge of the statement.

“Well you see it happens so quickly, like they pass across you, but I _swore_ that for a second I saw Mrs Bennet, who used to do those scrumptious rosemary scones after you helped her with that little herb garden, you remember?”

Crowley just looked at the angel in what he hoped accurately translated as bafflement and annoyance in whatever personal hell he’d been apparently trapped in. Given the unchanged fascination that Aziraphale was gifting his face area, he would guess not.

“Aziraphale what, and I cannot stress this enough, the fuck?”

The angel shook his head mutely, casting about once again for words that wouldn’t come and instead miracling a mirror into his hands. “I’m afraid I can’t quite do it justice. You’re like nothing I’ve ever seen before, dear boy.”

Crowley felt the throat that he didn’t have go dry at that but he tried to take comfort in the fact that he still had _something_ underneath his corporation, whatever that something was. If it wasn’t angelic it must be demonic so it was obviously just something new. It was a sentiment that didn’t quite survive contact with his reflection in the mirror.

He did, indeed, still look like Crowley. To a degree. At times he even almost looked like he was twisting towards his serpentine form before it pulled back into itself. Mostly though it sort of looked like Crowley if Crowley was the secret picture behind a magic eye puzzle. The form of him stayed generally human shaped but in a nebulous sort of way with the shifting of thousands of faces and forms inside the edges of it.

Aziraphale was right, too. There were plenty of faces that could be one of a million in a crowd but more and more that he could puzzle out in a flash of memory, especially those that were already strong to him. Eve, the old man who had been his first blessing for Aziraphale, at one point he was certain Emily Brontë. All of the faces were completely and mundanely human but overlapping the edges of the essence that formed him like it could hold him together.

He watched, mesmerised, for a few more moments before he could tear his eyes away. “What does it even mean?” He looked down at his own hands now he could comprehend the shape of his own form, watching them shift and twist too in the abstract.

Slender pianist’s fingers, calloused worker’s hands, brightly coloured nails sharpened to threatening points. When he saw the ghost of round wounds through wrists he couldn’t look any longer, though he could finally begin to guess at what he was seeing. It was hard to tell if it was some innate sense, his own understanding or some divine intervention he’d prefer to spit back into the ether but he felt the first guesses forming at the edges of his mind regardless.

Not for the first time he fled away from himself and into his corporation, not moving from where he’d been slumped on the couch as he grasped for his glass and took the last of the wine in two deep gulps.

When he dared to meet Aziraphale’s eyes he found the other stood worriedly, wine bottle in hand. Crowley nodded tersely and watched as the glass was filled with the kind of methodical care the angel always used when he was working something out.

“Think I’ve tempted or blessed most those people.” He finally said. There was a warmth in his stomach from the wine that tried to combat the twisted up not-quite empty of the rest of him. Still wasn’t quite drunk enough to be putting up with all of **this**.

Aziraphale seemed to agree, setting himself at the desk chair and setting the glasses out for whiskey. Surprisingly, he didn’t pour; merely left them there before putting all of his scrutiny onto Crowley.

The not-quite-demon could only let the silence stretch on for so long before it thoroughly pissed him off. “Well what the fuck does that even mean anyway? I mean that’s no bloody demon form is it, but what the Hell-Heav-sodding shit on a stick wankstain _is_ it supposed to be when it’s at home?”

More importantly, but far too raw to dare speaking it aloud, why was he cast out again, completely alone?

“What if this is what you were meant for all along?”

Crowley looked over to Aziraphale sharply. His jaw tightened in anger before he realised there was no way the angel could have known what he’d been thinking, could have known how callous that question might sound given the questions pulling at him like a riptide. He got up and defiantly poured himself out a shot of whiskey, knocking it back while maintaining as much eye contact as possible with the angel.

“What? Like it would be Her sodding Ineffable Plan to rip me apart for a few millennia and then dump me with a whole new schtick and never say a sodding word about it? Sounds about right.” He poured another out and slammed the glass onto the table by the couch as he flopped dramatically into it.

Aziraphale closed up again, all defensive and careful. “Well, you were always… At least it seems like… Well, from the first time I saw you, at least, you were exceptional. Who’s to say that you _wouldn’t_ be part of something new, if the great plan was never the end game in the first place, if the war was never _really_ meant to happen.”

Exceptional. It was warm coming from Aziraphale. It was the chill slash of sharp glass when applied to Her. To be made different and sent to suffer and wonder what it all meant. To be made to question and to be thrown from both of his homes for that trait with the single safe breathing place found in an angel that had to deny him at every turn, forever keep him at arm’s length.

He thought of Heaven’s party line. Of the individual born to poverty with the hardest life who merely had the “most opportunities” to choose good. Of humans thrown into the world by the millions without a light in the dark beyond the ones they made up and an occasional seer like Agnes who would inevitably be disbelieved for the easier lies. The twisting in the questions formed into something hard at the pit of his stomach

“I’d rather Satan take the lot of it than let Her keep playing with everyone’s lives. At least we know what to expect out of Hell.”

Aziraphale worried at the stem of his glass, eyes solemn and sad but maybe just a little curious. “Was it really better than Heaven? Or even what it’s become now?”

Crowley felt his face crumple, though he certainly wasn’t going to fucking cry. It just felt like all of the wind had been knocked out of him for a second. “We made ourselves our own god, you know. None of us even knew what emptiness or loss was before. She hollowed us out and tossed us into a boiling pit with nothing and we _Created_ something. So what if it’s shit? We built it ourselves, to stop us from falling apart after She took _everything we knew_. She doesn’t get to pretend She only meant the best and had this all planned out.”

This time Aziraphale looked down into his own hands, carefully chewing over his words. “I… I’m not saying it’s the case. I just think that perhaps you were always more than what we all seemed to be made of. I honestly don’t think that either of them are better than what humans have the capacity to be. Perhaps if you were made with so much more choice than any other an-de-supern-”

“If it was She’s a fucking- on top of being a narcissist.” He shook his head, jaw clenched hard enough that he could almost hear bone begin to crack. “She doesn’t get to have this. This isn’t what She did. If I could choose to do good it was _me_. If we made something it was in spite of Her.”

“Yes but - you were broken and you banded together. You needed that. I… I suppose it is astounding in its own way when you put it like that. I just suppose that I wonder if there was always something in you that had more free will than we ever thought before the war.”

“Yeah? And what does that _mean_ Aziraphale? Kicked out for a choice we didn’t even know we could make wrong. Angels aren’t supposed to be able to do the wrong thing but we could, She just kept it behind that fucking throne of Hers and let us walk ourselves to the edge. Smug that She was getting Her way no matter how many of us it destroyed.”

Aziraphale looked stricken at that, and he leant forward just enough to take Crowley’s hands in his. They were warm and strong but trembling all the same and Crowley could see him falling back to what he knew. “It must have worked for you at the time, to build yourselves a home. You were all so brave. But they’re tearing each other down as much as they’ve set themselves apart in Heaven. What if this was always what we were meant for? What if angels and demons were never the place we were supposed to stop growing?”

Crowley gripped hard against Aziraphale’s hands and fought the sting in the back of his eyes, the aching howl of his chest as he pressed those hands to his forehead. “You don’t understand, Aziraphale. I don’t care. I don’t care if something better comes at the end of it. I don’t care if all of this _meant_ something at the end of it all. If She tore us apart just to see if we could put ourselves back together again in a way She approved of - I don’t want to be this. I wouldn’t want to be anything that kind of psychopath would approve of.”

“Oh, Crowley”

“No, no you don’t get it angel! A parent that-” He grit teeth. Swallowed around the grief. The anger. “She doesn’t **get** to look down on us and think _‘Oh, look how strong I made them’_ when all She did was hurt us and wait to see if we rose to the challenge.”

There was silence for a moment. Then, oh so carefully, Aziraphale wrapped his arms around Cowley. “No, of course, you’re right and that’s unfair.”

“I liked what I made of myself with them. I liked that we could make ourselves anything at all after She scorched us in the pits. Now I’m not even like them. There’s no one any more. And I mean, look, _fuck_ if I won’t make something out of this too, because- because bugger that! I can do what I want. Make my own bleeding gang, with the Antichrist, and tree forts or whatever it is he’s up to, but the point is I shouldn’t have to.”

Aziraphale shifted minutely and Crowley could feel how tense he was wherever they touched. Then, with so little fanfare that the ex-demon might have dreamt it, he pressed a kiss to the top of his head. The tremble of his arms around him felt less like fear than it did a fierce protectiveness.

“No. I rather think you shouldn’t.”

Crowley couldn’t say that he was suddenly full, or that love washed over him, or any stupid corny sentiment like that. But he did feel warmer and the hollow of him felt slightly less empty with the unspoken promise that the angel was with him. He breathed in deep, trying to find bravery that he was certain he’d placed down and forgotten centuries ago.

“I guess I have to figure out what it all means. Not like _She’s_ gonna come down and start explaining Herself anyway.” Crowley looked down at his hands, clenching and unclenching them as if he could get a feel for whatever was beneath the skin.

Another whisper light kiss was pressed to his crown. “I know that I’ve been terribly careless with you in the past, and I’m likely well beyond second chances. Still, I should like to stay with you if you’d have me.”

Aziraphale’s fingers brushed against the demon’s palm; featherlight and yet it still made him jolt, still not expecting (never expecting) Aziraphale to be the first to reach. Yet when he turned there was that gentleness again and this time the twist in Crowley's heart was as much anticipation as fear.

He had time to figure out what any of this meant, time enough to plan to face Her and flip the birds if he so felt like it. If the place he’d been cast out to consisted only of this angel, and maybe one very confused 11 year old, it might just be enough to start building from again. This time nothing would take it away.

“Yeah, angel. It’s _our_ side, after all.”

When Aziraphale leaned in to kiss him this time there was no fear of the other’s expectations, only the soft press of lips and something achingly warm in his chest. He didn’t bother to fight his own smile as he grabbed his fussy angel by the lapels and deepened the kiss in return.

Time enough indeed.


End file.
